. Earth Science News .
ABOUT US
New evidence that humans settled in southeastern US far earlier than previously believed
by Staff Writers
Ann Arbor MI (SPX) May 18, 2016


Part of the upper, outer surface of the tusk base, surrounded by modeling clay in preparation for pouring a silicone mold. At center-left is a group of deep, parallel, transverse marks made with a stone tool as part of the tusk removal process. Diagonal marks to the left and right of cut marks were made by bone fragments caught in the space between the tusk surface and the alveolar bone, when the tusk was rotated back and forth while attempting to withdraw it from the socket. Image courtesy Daniel C. Fisher, University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology.

The discovery of stone tools found in a Florida river show that humans settled the southeastern United States far earlier than previously believed - perhaps by as much as 1,500 years, according to a team of scientists that includes a University of Michigan paleontologist.

Michael Waters of Texas A and M University and Jessi Halligan of Florida State University led a research team that also included U-M's Daniel Fisher and scientists from the University of Minnesota, University of Texas, University of Arizona, Stafford Research Laboratories in Colorado, Aucilla Research Institute in Florida, and Exeter and Cambridge universities in the United Kingdom.

A report on the team's findings is scheduled for online publication May 13 in Science Advances.

The researchers excavated the Page-Ladson site near Tallahassee, an archaeological site that is 26 feet underwater in a sinkhole on the Aucilla River. It was named Page-Ladson after Buddy Page, a former Navy Seal diver who first brought the site to the attention of archaeologists, and the Ladson family, owners of the property.

The site was first investigated from 1987 to 1997 by James Dunbar and David Webb. But their original findings, which included eight stone tools and a mastodon tusk with apparent cut marks, were dismissed.

U-M's Fisher reassembled and re-examined the tusk and concluded that the original interpretation - that the deep, parallel grooves in the surface of the tusk are cut marks made by humans using stone tools to remove the tusk from the skull - is correct.

"These grooves are clearly the result of human activity and, together with new radiocarbon dates, they indicate that humans were processing a mastodon carcass in what is now the southeastern United States much earlier than was generally accepted," said Fisher, director of the U-M Museum of Paleontology and a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"In addition, our work provides strong evidence that early human hunters did not hunt mastodons to extinction as quickly as supporters of the so-called 'Blitzkrieg' hypothesis have argued," Fisher said. "Instead, the evidence from this site shows that humans and megafauna coexisted for at least 2,000 years."

Working in near-zero-visibility waters in the murky Aucilla River from 2012 to 2014, the team led by Waters and Halligan excavated stone tools and the bones of extinct animals. The stone tools included a biface, a knife used for cutting and butchering animal meat.

Seventy-one new radiocarbon dates from the Page-Ladson site leave no doubt that the artifacts date to about 14,550 years ago. It's believed that Clovis hunters - once widely considered the first inhabitants of the Americas - settled in various sites about 13,000 years ago.

"The new discoveries at Page-Ladson show that people were living in the Gulf Coast area much earlier than believed," said Waters, director of Texas A and M's Center for the Study of the First Americans.

"The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools. These people were well-adapted to this environment. The site is a slam-dunk pre-Clovis site with unequivocal artifacts, clear stratigraphy and thorough dating."

Fisher's re-examination of the mastodon tusk revealed more than a dozen deep, parallel linear grooves on the end of the tusk that attached to the skull. The grooves are perpendicular to the long axis of the tusk. Most are 6 to 8 centimeters long and 1.5 millimeters deep or less.

The tusk may have been removed to gain access to edible tissue at its base, Fisher said.

"Each tusk this size would have had more than 15 pounds of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity, and that would certainly have been of value," he said.

Another possible reason to extract a tusk is that ancient humans who lived in this same area are known to have used ivory to make weapons, Fisher said.

Tusk roots, like all mammalian tooth roots, are suspended within their socket by a system of fibers called the periodontal ligament.

"It now appears that people were targeting disruption of this tissue when they cut into the side wall of the tusk socket, leaving the set of transverse grooves," Fisher said.

Fisher has excavated mammoths and mastodons in North America and Siberia and has personal experience with the practicalities of tusk removal. He once removed a tusk from a juvenile woolly mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost.

That carcass was in a condition similar to a freshly killed animal, he said. Because he needed to avoid unnecessary damage to the specimen, and because he had to improvise methods and tools to get the job done, it took him about eight hours.

"Compared to ancient hunters, I was a novice," Fisher said. "But I quickly learned that the most important thing was disrupting the ligament fibers holding the tusk in place."

The Clovis hunters originated south of the large ice sheets that covered Canada at that time and are the direct descendants of the earliest people who arrived in the New World around 15,000 years ago.

"This is a big deal," Florida State's Halligan said of the Page-Ladson discoveries. "There were people here. So how did they live? This has opened up a whole new line of inquiry for us as scientists as we try to understand the settlement of the Americas."

Texas A and M's Waters said the Page-Ladson site has changed dramatically since it was first occupied 14,550 years ago. Millennia of deposition associated with rising water tables tied to sea level rise left the site buried under 15 feet of sediment and submerged.

"Page-Ladson significantly adds to our growing knowledge that people were exploring and settling the Americas between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago," Page-Ladson said. "Archaeological evidence from other sites dating to this time period shows us that people were also adapted to living in Texas, Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and South America. Clearly, people were all over the Americas earlier than we thought."

Additionally, the evidence from Page-Ladson and the other sites shows that people coexisted with and hunted large mammals, such as the mammoth and mastodon, before they became extinct, he said.

Work by Texas A and M graduate student Angelina Perrotti on the dung fungus Sporormiella shows that extinction of the megafauna occurred around 12,600 years ago at the Page-Ladson site, a date that is synchronous with other regions in North America, Waters said.


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


.


Related Links
University of Michigan
All About Human Beings and How We Got To Be Here






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

Previous Report
ABOUT US
Climate change may have contributed to extinction of Neanderthals
Denver CO (SPX) May 17, 2016
A researcher at the University of Colorado Denver has found that Neanderthals in Europe showed signs of nutritional stress during periods of extreme cold, suggesting climate change may have contributed to their demise around 40,000 years ago. Jamie Hodgkins, a zooarchaeologist and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at CU Denver, analyzed the remains of prey animals and f ... read more


ABOUT US
Artist Ai Weiwei says Gaza key part of refugee crisis

Belgian prisons 'like North Korea' as strike crisis hits

Nepal's quake recovery costs up by a quarter

Rush on pillows at Canada evacuation center

ABOUT US
Scientists take a major leap toward a 'perfect' quantum metamaterial

UW team first to measure microscale granular crystal dynamics

Self-healing, flexible electronic material restores functions after many breaks

Digital "clone" testing aims to maximize machine efficiency

ABOUT US
Parasite helps sea snails survive ocean acidification

Philippines detains 25 Chinese, 18 Vietnamese fishermen

Victims of their own success

Acidification and low oxygen put fish in double jeopardy

ABOUT US
Increased vegetation in the Arctic region may counteract global warming

'Sleeping giant' glacier may lift seas two metres: study

Shrinking shorebird pays the bill for rapid Arctic warming while wintering in the tropics

Scientists track Greenland's ice melt with seismic waves

ABOUT US
Genetically engineered crops: Experiences and prospects

Farms have become a major air-pollution source

Illinois River water quality improvement linked to more efficient corn production

UN panel says weedkiller 'unlikely' to cause cancer

ABOUT US
Sri Lanka president flies to flood-hit area, toll hits 37

One dead as aftershocks shake quake-weary Ecuador

Sri Lanka flood toll hits 11, thousands more homeless

Disaster tourism: bitter lifeline for mud volcano survivors

ABOUT US
DR Congo denies getting pistols from North Korea

Senegal's child beggars show limits of 'apptivism'

S.Africa may re-consider regulated rhino horn trade in future

Climate-exodus expected in the Middle East and North Africa

ABOUT US
From Israel's army to Hollywood: the meteoric rise of Krav Maga

New evidence that humans settled in southeastern US far earlier than previously believed

Climate change may have contributed to extinction of Neanderthals

Drawing the genetic history of Ice Age Eurasian populations









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.