Florida, it seems, has always been a popular destination. Even the first known Americans gravitated to the state.

Of course, they probably went for the mastodons.

Underwater archaeologists and other researchers have taken a second look at a sinkhole 30 feet deep in the Aucilla River in northern Florida that is rich with remnants of stone tools, as well as fossilized mastodon bones and dung.

Although scientists had studied the location, known as the Page-Ladson site, for more than a decade and knew how old some of the material was, they could not come up with definitive evidence that humans and mastodons were there at the same time.

Now, the researchers say, the discovery of an unmistakable human artifact, a stone knife fragment, embedded in sand and dung that allowed for exact dating, proves that paleoindians, as archaeologists call the first people to come to North America, colonized northern Florida by 14,550 years ago.

David G. Anderson, an anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who specializes in the early history of humans on the continent, and who was not involved in the research, called the new work, reported in the journal Science Advances, “superb archaeological scholarship.”

The Page-Ladson site — named for Buddy Page, a diver who first found it, and the Ladson family, which owns the land around it — is about 30 feet underwater in a sinkhole in the Aucilla River southeast of Tallahassee, about seven miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. It was painstakingly uncovered from the early 1980s until the late 1990s by James S. Dunbar, who joined in the new research, and S. David Webb, then a paleontologist at the University of Florida. Together they wrote ”First Floridians and Last Mastodons: The Page-Ladson Site in the Aucilla River.”

It is the oldest site with evidence of human activity in the Southeastern United States and one of only a handful of sites that show that humans were living in North and South America by about 14,500 years ago.

Until recently, scientists thought that the first humans to come to America were big-game hunters who made stone tools in an identifiable style. They were called the Clovis people, after the location of the first discovery of such tools near Clovis, N.M. Researchers put the arrival of the Clovis people in the Americas at around 13,500 years ago.

But discoveries in Monte Verde, Chile; Texas; Wisconsin; Oregon; and a few other spots suggested that humans were in the Americas earlier, well over 14,000 years ago, without the distinctive Clovis tools.

And studies of modern and ancient DNA have suggested that the first humans to set foot in North America could have come much earlier, perhaps 16,000 or even 18,000 years ago. Michael R. Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, who led the research with Jessi J. Halligan, who was doing postdoctoral research with him at the time, said the DNA studies suggested that the first humans in America came down the Pacific Coast. So far, no one knows how they got to Florida.

When they arrived, however, they found a climate not much different from today, but the area was drier and more open, and the seas were much lower. The coast would have been about 125 miles from the site, which was then a spring-fed pond, in open, upland terrain, not part of any river.

The pond was probably frequented by mastodons and other extinct mammals, like ancient bison and rhinoceroses. People and animals would have gone there to drink, Dr. Halligan said, “and, if you were a mastodon, apparently wallow around and defecate a lot.”

Today the pond and its shore are deep in the Aucilla, known as a black water river because of its tea-colored, tannin-stained water, which posed an added challenge to the archaeologists. They used scuba gear and helmet-mounted caver’s lights to cope. “It is, as my dad would say, as dark as the inside of a cow,” Dr. Halligan said.

The radiocarbon dating of plant material found in the mastodon dung, plus a discovery that the layer containing the tools was sealed off by another layer on top that was also older than 14,000 years, confirmed the age of the site.

The age had been in doubt before in part because of less conclusive tool fragments and questions about whether the river may have churned up the sediments.

There was also a mastodon tusk, with cuts that looked like they might have been made by humans. But that evidence was doubted, too, so Daniel C. Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan, joined the recent investigation to reanalyze the tusk. He said the marks were made exactly where people would have had to cut through a tough ligament to remove the tusk from a carcass and could not have been made another way.

Why would the first Floridians have worked so hard? Probably for a stone age delicacy: up to 15 pounds of fat-rich pulp at the deep, growing root of the tusk.

It’s a bit like bone marrow, available at fine restaurants in Miami.

Next, they'll find a mammoth souvenier shop that also sold oranges and tshirts...

Check out the Topper excavation site on the bank of the Savannah River. Looks like some different information on humans moving into the Americas. Very interesting stuff.

I love this kind've stuff.

Big differences between mammoths and mastodons.

Fascinating. 14,500 years ago, humans in Florida.

were they there before or after the Great Flood?

Florida's first retirement community. They're still there, driving around in golf carts.

Completely fascinating.

To think that human activity in North America was only limited to 10,000-11,000 years ago when 2/3 of North America and all of the rest of the Americas were NOT covered in ice is incredibly short sighted.

The Aborigines came to Australia about 50,000 years ago. They had to cross a straight about as wide as the Bering Strait (though not as cold) to get there. There is no reason why Paleo-Indians could not have entered the Americas earlier than 13,500 years ago.

That was interesting. I'd like to know how they determined that stains on carbonized wood were the result of a natural fire, rather than manmade. Bet it's a lousy explanation. Not much experience with archeologists, but a lot with paleontologists. They always think they are right.

I live a couple hours north of there and have found mammoth teeth, megalodon shark teeth, petrified poop, all kinds of artifacts in the creek that flows by my house. Love this kind of stuff.

Found a whale rib bone, all kinds of teeth recently.

a lot of bones and artifacts have come out of the Suwannee and SanteFe rivers here in N. Florida. Many folks have really nice bits and pieces sitting around the house.
One of my buds found the skull of an ancient, and very rare, pelagic whale. He traded it to the UF Museum for a sabertooth Tiger skull, which he has on display in his library.
Florida has some very strict, and confiscatory rules about looking for, finding, and possessing antiquities and artifacts. State goes medieval if you are caught with ancient human remains. You can be prosecuted at any stage. This is supposed to protect the items, but of course, it only has created a huge underground and illegal traffic in said items.

And yet the gulf was 125 miles away from that site... the facts are we'll never know the exact history...

Wonder what man made folly changed the sea levels back then. LOL.

Yeah, I live very close to Calvert Cliffs, on the Chesapeake. Meg teeth, whale bones, obviously deep water. WAAAAAY before we had Suburbans.

Texas site

http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/gault/

Ringy will be along shortly to hammer us in the head with his Bible and tell us that these fossils are nothing but a trick of Lucifer!

So they found a stone knife fragment embedded in stone and dung and that disproves the entire Biblical account of the age of the earth. Uhhhhh...


And they say Biblical believers are grasping at straws. Man this stuff is hilarious, keep it up boys, you're killin me!!!!!!!!!

There's some evidence that humans were in North America and Mexico as far back as 40,000 years ago. Studies conducted on evidence found at ancient campsites and fire rings in North America and Mexico indicate that modern man was 'here' long before the "less than 20,000 years ago" conventional model.

Oh no I'm with you.I've burnt all of my scientific text books, Beelzebub sure has us fooled!

As near as I can tell, they blamed Bush for it.

I lived an hour and a half NORTH of Atlanta in the mountains for 13 years and while digging in our flower bed found a complete clam shell !! I had it authenticated by the Ubiversity of Georgia archeological (geological?) department about 27 years ago....it was documented to be an estimated 270 million years old! That predates the dinosaurs. That was a long long way from either the gulf or Atlantic coasts.

I don't think the "experts" have any idea how long humans have been in North America. They dated the Clovis culture back 13,500 years ago, so they proclaim, "Humans arrived here 13,500 years ago"

Now they've had to add 1000 years to it and it totally blows their entire theory about the Bering Ice Bridge bringing the first humans to North America.

I think it's probably a good bet that quite a few of them figured out that boats float a long time before the Bering Sea froze over. Some made it,...some didn't. But I bet they've been here a lot longer than anyone will ever be able to prove.

For more than a generation, any paleontologist that even suggested there were pre-Clovis populations was pilloried in the scientific community. It was a guaranteed career-ender, and all funding would dry up. It was professional suicide to challenge "settled science".

Feel free to draw parallels to other current academic "hot topics".

They find both mammoth and saber-tooth remains pretty much right where I am, as well as giant tree sloths that were 12' tall or more at the shoulder. All from approx 12k-14k years ago. Blows my mind. That is an absolute blink of an eye in biological time, much less geological time.

When I lived in Albuquerque my buddy and I tromped the Sandias a lot. That's the mountain range right by ABQ... Up at the crest, in the cliffs, there's ton of sea fossils. When you are 10,000 feet in elevation.... many hundreds of miles from any salt water... in the middle of a massive desert.... and finding sea fossils.... that is mind boggling in its own right!

Must have been some kind of, um, flood. Who knew?

I guess it could be sea creatures that developed wings and flew inland, only to die due to unfavorable conditions, for uh, sea things. Yeah, that's it.

If you look at the history of science, it's pretty clear that protecting one's research findings (i.e., turf) isn't done gently. A lot of good science has been thrown on the burn pile. In the real sciences the truth eventually comes out. Sometimes even in the social sciences.

In this case, it's almost a joke that the nothing-before-Clovis mentality went so little challenged for so long.

What does the Koran say about it?

The Koran says kill it, it's relatives, and all the animals associated with it. Strike it from the land for eternity.

Is that verbatim or just another load of god-bothering bull-[bleep]?

Whatever the topic, I'm pretty sure the Koran says to kill it.

And it's relatives.

Oh, and the animals.

Strike them from the land. Smite them actually. Smite them from the land. Basically. Yeah.

So...bull-[bleep] it is then.


whether written by your lying bull-[bleep] artists or their lying bull-[bleep] artists, it makes little difference as it all looks and smells the same.

That there is genius analysis, FB2! I like smiting, myself. I smite all kinds of stuff whenever I can. Hogs, turkeys, varmints. Smite smite smite. Mmmmm.

But I just can't bring myself to phuque goats, so I guess I'll never make a good muslim...

You gotcher self a smite coming partner.

And how is that different from the Old Testament?

The Bible and the Koran are identical. You win. We're done.

Smite away sport.

Correct...both printed on paper, and paper will take [bleep].


And before you get on your high horse...anything written by man will be self-aggrandising, self-congratulatory, and self-enriching.

Particularly by men mincing about in dress', who smell of little boys arses rather than sweat from honest labour.


Have a nice day.

Consider yourself smited. And flushed.

Your god-like awesomeness doesn't seem to be working so well today...maybe you shouldn't be putting yourself in God's place.

And try this on for size, if you lot of closet godlings know God so well...what doe he look like?


And if you cannot answer that than all else you have to say on the subject is fluff to baffle the gullible.

And here I am thinking we're all in a great mood. Have you started drinking already? What time is it there?

Relax big boy, take a deep breath, it's Saturday. The week is over, you can uncoil now.

A. I don't drink.
B. it is Sunday.
C. You have been peeking...must be a god-botherer thing.

You're going to have to explain all the God stuff. I'm just not on your page.

Just picking a fight, waiting for some stupid [bleep] god-botherer to turn up and attempt to convince the world that their leaders are not a bunch of peds.


But if none bite soon enough I am going to bed as I start work at 2.30 this afternoon.

Bet they couldn't count either!!

it can all be mind boggling, but none of it disproves the bible.

At least not for me. I can accept all of it.

GSY
(go smite yourself)

Dang I wish I'd thoughta that! I may steal it anyway.

The migrations on foot, whenever they occurred, crosse the Bering land bridge. Sea levels were lower during the last ice age and Alaska and Siberia were connected by an isthmus that was well above sea level.

As a younger man, I was working on a construction site in Tampa, not far from the water. The location was said to have been a fort or staging point during the Civil War, which made sense because it was close to an area where boats could be loaded and unloaded to supply the location.

As excavation and digging for the pile caps to support the pilings began, several workers (not me, unfortunately) began finding some relics that dated to that time. This put everybody's radar up because everyone on the site wanted to be the one to find the next relic.

A few months into the construction, a worker uncovered a mound that when penetrated had human bones inside and was immediately recognized as being an Indian burial mound, very similar to many that had been found in the area for many years before. Everybody knew that the presence of human remains meant a stop everything situation.

I clearly remember one superintendent on the project hovering over the mound, trying to quickly and covertly cover the mound and the contents within. Sad to say (for him), word got out quickly and the whole site was shut down for several weeks to investigate for any other spots that might be similar.

It was great entertainment watching that superintendent trying to cover that hole with sheets of plywood. The more plywood he threw over the hole, the bigger the hold got. He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Oh you complete POS. I would live to show you just how imperfect some of us Christians are.

Have at it, might pay to bring some of your bum-buddies with you.


Have a nice day.

Lighten up Francis.

Would Jesus approve?

I'm sure Moses would.

He killed everybody.

Wonder how long it took folks to walk from Alaska to Florida?

How about Alaska to Tierra del Fuego!!!

Our beaches (I'm only a few hundred miles west of Florida) have produced primitive tools of unknown origin forever. The fact that nobody really talks about those older than are supposed to be here was something that my daughter and I were discussing just the other day.

As to sea fossils being found at 10,000 ft elevation. think of plates colliding and lifting at the rate of one tenth inch a year. That would be an inch every 10 years, a foot every 120 years. 120 X 10,000 would be 1,200,000 years. That might explain sea fossils at 10,000 feet elevation. What do you think?

Oh, by the way, I believe Jesus (Yeshua)n was exactly who he said he was.

Canadians were first!

We actually have a place called pink mountain that is supposed to be the earliest site of man in north america

And land bridges all have shorelines and primitive people all know how to build boats. That would get them down the coast to South America a lot faster.

Yes, the old people made it here some 40-60,000 years ago and had to cross water to do so, it is an odds on bet your lot were there a lot earlier than the eggheads think and it is also a safe bet that they didn't walk all the way.

I am not sure why everyone just takes it for granted that those who came before us were stupid and lazy.