Paleoanthropology is not a real science...

[JTEM]

If you've got Netflix then go watch
NOVA: Ice Age Death Trap. It's all
pretty damaging, pretty damning of
Paleoanthropology...

"Ice Age Death Trap"

It's an interesting little story about
the discovery & excavation of some 45
thousand year old animal remains... remains
that outwardly appear to show evidence of
HUMAN activity!

The claim is that these remains are 100%
consistent with what they call a "Meat
Catch," a primitive technique for preserving
large food sources such as mammoths.

Backing up a tad here...

The claim here is that large animals, such
as a mammoth, contain way more meat than a
small hunter-gather group could eat in
months. And they can't turn it all into
beef jerky, they explain, because that would
be more than they can deal with, and anyway
it would attract every predator looking to
scavenge a free meal...

The solution, they tell us, is a "Meat
Catch." This is where they use the
preservative qualities of the lake to
both preserve the meat and keep it out
of reach of most predators...

Okay, so they claim that this site looks
like a "Meat Catch" -- the greatest
authority on "Meat Catches" on the planet
it saying this, a man they describe as
having "studied more meat caches than anyone"
is saying that this looks like a "Meat
Catch" to him...

But there's more.

There's a bone, one small bone, that
appears to have cut marks. And I don't
mean that it looks similar to cut marks,
I mean that if you find a bone that looks
EXACTLY like this one associated with
Clovis aged or younger sites, nobody
(and I do mean "Nobody") would doubt for
a moment that these were indeed cut
marks.

Need I remind you that evidence no
different than the bone here is used to
"definitely" date the use of stone
tools to the time of Lucy:

http://www.mpg.de/618278/pressRelease20100806

Same evidence: "Cut marks."

No less clearly "Cut marks."

Now I'm not saying that people HAD TO
BE in the Americas some 45 thousand years
ago or earlier, or that Lucy & kin didn't
use stone tools. What I'm saying is that
Paleoanthropology is NOT a real science,
and it's not even consistent. The same
evidence -- THE EXACT SAME FIND -- is both
"Proof" of human activity and the ridiculous
not to mention dangerously wild (and
unfounded) misreading of perfectly natural
objects.

Move this "Meat Catch" to a time of
undisputed human habitation and everyone
sees human activity. Move the small bone
to a site dated to after human occupation
and it is without question the result of
a deliberate butchering of an animal by
people.

I'm sorry, but no matter how you slice it,
Paleoanthropology is not a real science.

Either anthropologists honestly can't tell
the difference between butchering an animal
and an old bone being scratched on rocks,
or anthropologists regularly ignore hard
evidence if it doesn't jive with their
preconceived notions.

I'll accept "Both" as an answer.

Personally, I have no problems believing
that our ancestors reached the Americas
just as soon as they were capable of it.
For me the length of time is not the
factor, but the means & opportunity...

"If they could do it, they did it."


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[JTEM]

I should say:

I honestly have no trouble believing
that humans might have arrived in the
Americans more than 40 thousand years
ago, or even more than 100 thousand
years ago. I have far less trouble
accepting 45 thousand year old humans
in north America than i do Lucy & kin
running around with stone tools,
butchering meat as they go...

As I've said, human arrival isn't a
factor of time, it's one of means
and opportunity.

Human transport during the last
glaciation was supposedly achieved
by boat, yes, and later by foot across
a naturally occurring "Land Bridge"
and then through an "Ice Passage" which
opened up through the glaciers. Did
such a "Land Bridge" and "Ice Corridor"
occur during the previous glaciation?
Is so, the Americas could have been
reached more than 100 thousand years
ago, or much further than even that --
any glaciation which produced the same
"Land Bridge" while allowing an "Ice
Corridor" could have been a highway for
any human population... going back to
erectus or even habilis!

Of course, boats are another avenue.
However far back you want to push boats
is how far back you're granting the
technology to reach the Americas REGARDLESS
of sea level & glaciers.

Now the NOVA episode -- Ice Age Death
Trap -- gets around all this with the
judicious use if idiocy.

See, going by conventional (DNA derived)
dating, the Chimpanzee line flourished for
anywhere from 7.5 to 4 million years without
leaving a single fossil. Not a one. And yet
when confronted by what is unquestionable
evidence under every other circumstance they,
dismiss it in the case of a 45 thousand year
old find in Colorado because that would
require human habitation for some 25 thousand
years or more with no previous identified finds.

Wait. It gets worse.

Most of north America was periodically scraped
clean by glaciers -- reaching deep into the
bedrock. Dinosaur remains are quite rare in
New England, for example, because the glaciers
wiped the rocks clean down to a sufficient
depth to destroy most every fossil. Plus there
was all the melt water, of course, and the
heavy forests which covered most of the continent
before/after the glaciers (or where they couldn't
reach during their time) aren't very conducive
to fossilization.

...plus fossils are usually described as a
one-in-a-million event, so you need a pretty
good sized population to produce even a single
one per year... or a very, VERY long time with
a small population, just to ensure hitting that
one-in-a-million chance.

And who says that they haven't been preserved
or even that they haven't been found?

If 100 years ago someone was digging the foundation
for a house or office building and saw what looked
like a very old bone, do you know what they did?

They kept digging.

Plenty -- if not most -- private developers would
do the same today. Reporting a find means stopping
the work... means adding all sorts of time to the
schedule... means HUGE cost over runs... possibly
even massive finance issues.

And let's not forget that an intact find would be
rare indeed. It's easy to recognize a completely
intact spear head or hand axe, and to differentiate
them from a much more recent indian arrow. But if
you do find that spear or arrow head then chances
are it's fragmented, not intact, and you might not
recognize it as a tool at all... and 99.9999999%
of the population couldn't tell a Neanderthal artifact
from a Hopi Indian...

And let's be frank here: Who the hell is looking?

Long story short: Rent NOVA's "Ice Age Death
Trap." No, it does NOT make a compelling case
for human settlement of the Americas more than
40 thousand years ago, but it does expose
Paleoanthropology for the unscientific joke that
it is.

The "Cut marks" tell the story more so for me
than the whole "Meat Cache." Take the same
small bone with "Cut marks" and claim it's
30 thousand years younger and nobody doubts
you. Take that same bone with "Cut marks" and
claim that it's 3.5 million years old, but you
found it in Africa, and nobody doubts you. Find
it in Colorado and call it 45 thousand years old
and you're denounced.




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