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oldest spear points in America found outside Salado - possibly 2,500 yrs older than Clovis


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the only downside is they were discovered bya team led by aggy, but still pretty cool

Stone spear points that researchers found during a 12-year excavation at the Debra L. Friedkin site outside of Salado may be the oldest weapons ever found in North America.

The Buttermilk Creek Complex site is named for the family that owns the land on which the discovery was made.

The points discovered by a team led by Texas A&M University researchers are 15,500 years old, predating the Clovis, who for decades were believed to be the first people to have entered the Americas.

There is no doubt these weapons were used for hunting game in the area at that time,” Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters said.

“The discovery is significant because almost all pre-Clovis sites have stone tools, but spear points have yet to be found,” he said.

The points made of chert and other tools were found under a layer of sediment with Clovis and Folsom projectile points that dating showed to be 15,500 years old

Clovis dates back about 13,000 years.

The findings of the team, which also includes researchers from Baylor University and the University of Texas, are published in the current issue of Science Advances.

Dr. Steven L. Forman, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor, is listed among the primary authors.

“The findings expand our understanding of the earliest people to explore and settle North America,” Waters said.

“The peopling of the Americas during the end of the last Ice Age was a complex process and this complexity is seen in their genetic record. Now we are starting to see this complexity mirrored in the archaeological record.”

The points would be about 2,000 years older than artifacts found just a few miles away at the renowned Gault Site in Williamson County that date to more than 13,000 years old.

In a story published on KWTX.com on July 18, Dr. Michael B. Collins, chairman of the Gault School of Archeological Research (GSAR), which oversees the remote archaeological dig site in Williamson County, said a new discovery there shows that site likely was occupied far earlier than the 10,000 to 12,000 years experts initially believed, possibly as far back as 16,000 years.

In the article Collins said Gault bears evidence of continuous human occupation beginning at least 16,000 years ago, and now perhaps earlier, which makes it one of a few but growing number of archaeological sites in the Americas where scientists have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to centuries before the appearance of the Clovis culture at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago.

Those two sites aren’t the only Paleo-Indian sites near Waco because as far back as 12,500 years ago a man and a little girl died and were buried under a limestone outcropping upriver from the old suspension bridge.

About 12,500 years ago early humans found a rock shelter along the Brazos River north of what is now Waco and for the next 11,500 years, at least, someone lived there according to the “signs of native American life everywhere here.”

Horn Shelter 1 and 2 are among the oldest continually inhabited sites ever found in North America.

 

https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Spear-points-found-in-Central-Texas-oldest-ever-found-in-N-America-498586261.html

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3 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

So 15,000 years ago, there was actually something going on halfway between Waco and Austin.

Wonder what happened.

I-35 construction.  Couldn't get supplies in on time.  Extinct.
I think they're about to finish up this last 15,000 year segment.  Maybe.  No, what am I saying?  No fucking way.

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56 minutes ago, futureman said:

so fuckin stupid. 

Here you go with your same tired schtick.  I see you can't seem to keep following me around like a lost puppy.  You must have a really awful life.

Living rent free in your head is pretty funny though except there's only old bong water and welfare checks to keep me company.

Edited by GlenFromTheMailRoom
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