When Did Man Come to the Americas?

It has been accepted theory for decades that the first humans came to the Americas about 11,000 years ago. Every once in awhile though, something pops up that disputes this timeframe.
Some archeologists toady are saying that mankind was in the Americas anywhere from 40,000 years ago to a whopping 1.3 million years ago! Yes that is right, fossilized footprints that were discovered in Mexico two years ago were origionally were there around 40,000 years ago. Now a team of scientists from University of California, Berkeley now are questioning the age of the footprints. Paul Renne of the University of California, Berkeley, now thinks that the footprints are either extremely older than thought before or that they are not footprints. The reason that he makes this statment is the latest dating of the footprints puts the age of the 250 human and animal footprints are around 1.3 million years old which if substantiated will rewrite present theories of when mankind crossed over into the American continents.


Scientists question age of ancient footprints

New Evidence Puts Man In North America 50,000 Years Ago

America's Oldest Cities and Pyramids

Thats a very good find. If substanciated, this could change all of our opinions on man in America

Very good read as well

The Aniyunwiya (Cherokee) or Tsalagi people say our Ancestors came here from Galunlati, the World Above long, long ago when no humans were on Earth.

I think you might find a scientific clue to the age of Man in the Americas by looking at the origin of the Llama...

[edit on 1-12-2005 by Chakotay]

He did not need to spend a fortune on buying a new biometric passport.

things like this have been discovered before, i was reading about a book on this subject a while ago, was going to order it but havent done so yet..

Forbidden Archeology by Michael Cremo
www.mcremo.com...

Btw nice avatar kenshiro2012

[edit on 1-12-2005 by SilverSurfer]

So any thoughts on how this will impact the Genographic project as this project is rigidly putting timestamps on human migration. theres obviously something out of kilt here gonna love to see if this turns out to be true. Of course these tracks could be miss identified the 1.3 mill time frame is pretty mind boggling.

That depends on a couple of things
First, validation that they are indeed footprints
Second, what type of homid was it?
Remember they recently discovered the infamous hobbit fossils (bones) so the footprints if validated could have been of another offshoot species.

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
It has been accepted theory for decades that the first humans came to the Americas about 11,000 years ago. Every once in awhile though, something pops up that disputes this timeframe.
Some archeologists toady are saying that mankind was in the Americas anywhere from 40,000 years ago to a whopping 1.3 million years ago!

Actually, what they're saying is that the ROCK layer is up to 1.3 million years ago and they "footprints" may not be human or may not be footprints at all.

The 40,000 year figure is controversial although there's reasonably good evidence for 20,000 years.

What?
Here is two quotes from the article. I broke it up not to change what they say but for brevity sake

"One is that they are really old hominids — shockingly old — or they're not footprints," he added in a statement.

But Renne and a team of geologists and anthropologists who used an argon dating technique and another method to analyse the age of fossils said they were about 1.3 million years old.

To me Renne is saying that the fossilized footprints are 1.3 million years old.
Did I miss something?

That's right. Renne is saying it -- but she's really out on a limb, here. As I recall from the pictures (and my memory is REAL poor, here) these are mostly depressions that are about the dimensions of a human foot. You couldn't hold it up on CSI:Miami and declare it evidence for a crime. Most of the people who looked at it didn't think they were footprints.

Also, the age of the rock hasn't been confirmed by a second lab (which is why it's bad form to rush off and make an announcement.)

Compare here: the Laetoli footprints in Africa (about 3.5 million years old):
www.mnh.si.edu...

Here's the Mexican ones:
www.mexicanfootprints.co.uk...

...now, I can see why some would be skeptical. The left footprint (the most clear one) isn't the same kind of configuration as a human foot. It's broader and the toes aren't slanted from big to small toe. It could be a primate and not necessarily human.

I think she rushed things. She'd have done better to announce the tracks of a "possible primate" and work up from there. A set of footprints without bones is very scanty evidence.

IMHO, of course. It'd be interesting if there actually WAS a fossil human... it would be a different species from homo sapiens.

IMHO, of course. It'd be interesting if there actually WAS a fossil human... it would be a different species from homo sapiens.

That is actually my thought on the subject which is why I brought up the "hobbit" findings in an earlier post.
The thing that makes me question what is going on here is that the footprints were discovered in 2003 and then give the 40,000 year age by Silvia Gonzalez of John Moores University. She and her team concluded that the tracks were of early hunters back then.
So here is the question..... the 40,0000 is the part that other archeologists questioned not that the impressions were footprints or not. If the footprints were homid or not. They seemed only to be questioning the age of the find.
Now that the age maybe a heck of alot older (1.3 million) now they seemed to be questioning that they are even footprints at all or that they are of homid origion.
I agree with you that the footprints do not seem to be Human per se and are more likely a homid offshoot.

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
So here is the question..... the 40,0000 is the part that other archeologists questioned not that the impressions were footprints or not. If the footprints were homid or not. They seemed only to be questioning the age of the find.

Yes. Everyone agrees they're footprints.

They DISagree on what made the footprints.

Now that the age maybe a heck of alot older (1.3 million) now they seemed to be questioning that they are even footprints at all or that they are of homid origion.

I think they'd have raised less of a howl about 40,000 years (which would make them early homo sapiens...and the Amerinds ARE h. sapiens stock) than 1.3 million years. There's evidence showing h sapiens in America at 20,000 years ago (so 40,000 might not be a stretch.) But there's no older evidence (say, 80,000 years ago and 1 million years ago in the form of skeletons).

Interesting riddle, though. They need to have several labs date the stone, and quickly. But without other evidence, archaeologists won't rush in to declare these human. There've been enough miss-called fossils and frauds like the Piltdown Man to make archaeologists VERY cautious about these finds.

hmmm...

The 15,000 to 20,000 year date was generally accepted several years ago, but I do not believe it still is used. I believe the current accepted date is 35,000 to 40,000 years, with some anecdotal and controversial evidence of earlier hominids that died out (50,000?).

I've read the reuters release a fair few times now and something irks me about it.

The first team is reported to have concluded this.

In 2003, an international team of scientists headed by Silvia Gonzalez of John Moores University in Liverpool, England found about 250 human and animal prints in a layer of volcanic ash.

So according to them they are human footprints but not some extremely old hominid.

Renne's team reports

We conclude that either hominid migration into the Americas occurred very much earlier than previously believed, or that the features in question were not made by humans on recently erupted ash.

So who do you believe? The first team state they are human foot prints with animal prints the second team state they either are hominid footprints or are not man-made.
If they are not man-made then what are they? They both insinuate the prints if they are that, where created on recently erupted ash. The timescales differ considerably the first team say they are human footprints from 40k approx whereas team 2 say they could be up tp 1.3mill yrs old .So if they are human made that throws all the studies on migration completely out of the window yet if they are not man made it puts an even bigger question mark as to what made them and why they where miss-identified in the first place. I really cant make my mind up about this i just have a feeling something isn't right here at all.

Linguists say that in order for there to be as many amero-languages as there are (3 language groups and several thousand languages) that humans should have migrated here around 30,000 for the languages to diverge

Originally posted by Vegemite
Linguists say that in order for there to be as many amero-languages as there are (3 language groups and several thousand languages) that humans should have migrated here around 30,000 for the languages to diverge

Isn't that assuming the original migrants all spoke one language? I thought at least two, possibly three or more distinct, mitochondrial DNA histories have been found in Native Americans. This would suggest the migrants originally came from more than one Asian location and thus would most likely have differing original languages. It is believed there were multiple migration events over time, with some, but not all, of the earlier peoples dying out and the later migrants carved out their own niche in the Americas.

Theres 3 indigenous language groups (like indoeuropean)
20 something language families (like roman, german, semetic)
and hundreds of languages

heres a language family map

Originally posted by dave_54
Isn't that assuming the original migrants all spoke one language? I thought at least two, possibly three or more distinct, mitochondrial DNA histories have been found in Native Americans.

No, actually this theory DOES take into account a couple of things: that there were three to four huge migrations (where a whole "nation" moved over a period of time) and a long sequence of small groups coming across the very easy to cross Bering Strait... and on the opposite side, that a few made it across from Europe during the ice ages.

If you look at the map above, the most recent languages (the Athabaskan) overlay a broad area... but the OLDEST languages are isolated pockets among the blankets of other languages. These oldest languages share common roots, but may be incomprehensible to other subgroups.

The Chumash language, for instance, has six distinct and different sublanguages. Speakers of any sublanguage can NOT understand the other sublanguages. This is another indication of a very old language and a very old people.


[quote This would suggest the migrants originally came from more than one Asian location and thus would most likely have differing original languages. It is believed there were multiple migration events over time, with some, but not all, of the earlier peoples dying out and the later migrants carved out their own niche in the Americas.
Exactly! "Yes" to both points.

The arguments I've see on this thread so far seem to ignore the ever increasing evidence of man coming to the Americas via the Pacific Ocean (more than once), as well as across the Bering Strait. The proponents of the Bering Strait migrations tend to poo-poo anything that doesn't fit in with their world view. Controversial evidence of a fishing village way down near the tip of South America was largely ridiculed and dismissed because it would have changed the date of the earliest known humans in the New World to around 70,000 years ago. Other evidentiary finds in South America have been similarly shunted aside.

Academically there is a lot at stake here and the ramifications of men coming to the New World that long ago starts to trickle back down the time lines all the way back to the "Out Of Africa" time line. Such a time-line for men coming to the Americas even begins to question the entire genesis of the "Out Of Africa" movement so strongly pushed on the academic community, because it lends credence to the multiple-simultaneous origins of man proponents.

Archeologists and others in the scientific community are just as human as the rest of us and they tend to get married to either their own, or someone else's ideas and fiercely defend them in the face of all criticism, sometimes for decades. So-called Egyptologists are a good example of this. Evidence is fairly plentiful that mankind was doing reasonably civilized things in Egypt as long ago as 13,000 years, yet anything that goes further back into the past than around 4-5,000 years is just ignored or made fun of.

[edit on 4-12-2005 by Astronomer68]

abcnews.go.com They estimated that early hunters walked across the ash deposited near a lake 40,000 years ago. Prior to that discovery, humans were thought to have arrived in the Americas across a land bridge from Asia about 11,000 years ago.

Just wanted to post this illustration of Pangaea to help picturing humans movement across continents.

pubs.usgs.gov...