Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992 TAG: 9202100100
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
DRAMATIC NEW WORLD CLUES FOUND
Dramatic new evidence that humans had entered the New World by at least 28,000 years ago - twice as far into the past as has been universally accepted - and perhaps even 38,000 years ago, was reported here Sunday.The archaeologist who led the team that made the finds in a New Mexico cave on the grounds of Fort Bliss pronounced them "incontrovertible evidence of the presence of humans" before the usually cited date of 11,500 years ago.
While several claims of comparably old or even older finds have been made, none has offered both indisputable evidence of human presence and secure dating. Experts in the long-simmering controversies over just when ancient Asians crossed into North America said the new discoveries may come closer than ever to providing the decisive combination of data.
Scientists who heard the report at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said the most tantalizing signs of human presence are what appear to be human palm and fingerprints on clay found in a 28,000-year-old layer and hearths in various layers going back perhaps 38,000 years, many of them ringed with fire-cracked stones and still holding charred logs up to 8 inches in diameter - far bigger than could have been brought into the cave by animals.
The prints, which have been verified as human by police forensic scientists, were on clay that had been shaped to serve as a fire pit and which had been hardened by the fire.
The report was made by Richard S. MacNeish of the Andover Foundation for Archaeological Research in Massachusetts. MacNeish, one of the country's best-known specialists on the peopling of the New World, had previously found sites in Central and South America that strongly suggested an early human presence.
"This is the one that's going to finish off the skeptics," MacNeish said in an interview. "This time we knew exactly what kind of evidence it was going to take to convince people. We've got it, and we're getting more."
Orthodox archaeology has taught that the Clovis people, whose chipped stone points have been found in the ribs of a species that became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, were the ancestors of all native American peoples. The search for pre-Clovis sites has become an obsession for some.
"We've got about 10 lines of evidence that nail this one down pretty good," MacNeish said.
The shallow cave, called Pendejo, reaches into a limestone bluff and contains 25 distinct layers ranging from modern times at the top to progressively older layers deeper down. The dating was done by the radiocarbon method and in some cases confirmed by a newer method, thermoluminescence.
MacNeish said there are fireplaces, in many layers. Many are surrounded by stones and filled with charcoal in large enough pieces to indicate that sizable logs were brought into the cave.
The layers also yielded tools. While the artifacts were rather crudely shaped, MacNeish said about half were of types of stone that had to have been brought into the cave, some from 10 miles away.