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12,000-Year-Old Bones Found in Kansas
AP (via Yahoo) ^ | Feb 15, 2002

Posted on 02/15/2005 4:44:02 PM PST by Mr. Mojo

GOODLAND, Kan. - Scientists say mammoth and camel bones unearthed in northwest Kansas that date back 12,200 years could be part of "one of the most important archaeological sites in North America."

The bones, found last June in Sherman County near the Colorado border, were alongside a piece of stone that archaeologists say was the kind used in tools that humans once used to butcher animals.

Archaeological geologist Rolfe Mandel of the Kansas Geological Survey said carbon-14 dating completed last week shows the bones are between 12,200 and 12,300 years old, which could mean humans lived on the Great Plains 1,300 years earlier than previously thought.

Mandel said if excavations this summer verify the finding of the stone tool, it would make the archaeological site among the oldest in the New World.

"It would be one of the most important sites in North America," he said.

Researchers initially found mammoth bone and stone-tool flint next to each other in soil dating back 11,000 years at the site. Below that, they found mammoth and camel bone that were fractured in a way that they say could only have been caused by people who shattered bone with stone to either make flaked bone tools or get to the marrow.

"Some scientists won't be convinced that the older bones got here because of human hunters," said Mandel, who is leading the team that found the bones. "I'm not convinced, either. But I'm 75 percent convinced. There are few other ways the bones could be broken naturally the way they're broken."

Ancient and more modern stone-age hunters sharpened their butchering tools alongside the bodies of the animals they killed, flaking flint off dulled stone-knife blades and leaving traces of their sharpening work beside the bones.

Mandel said he's absolutely positive about the layer of 11,000-year-old bones and stone artifacts, which he said make the Sherman County dig the oldest site of verified human occupation and activity in Kansas, and among the oldest in North America.

The dig began after a landowner in the area found a mammoth tooth in 1976 and contacted the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. In the 1980s, a paleontologist who found animal bones there noted that the fracture patters on the bones were unusual.

Based on mammoth-kill sites in western North America, scientists previously dated the earliest confirmed evidence of humans on the Great Plains at 11,000 to 11,500 years ago. Mandel said the new evidence will add to the debate over when humans inhabited the Western Hemisphere.

Conventional wisdom has been that people came across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago. But Mandel said the northwest Kansas dig means "we're rethinking not only when people arrived, but where they came from."

Mandel said material at the site indicates a small family of nomads likely used it as a campsite. Those people would have drifted across the land, following herds of animals, he said.

"It would have been a very rough lifestyle," Mandel said.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: archaeology; bobdole; clovis; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; history; kansas; preclovis; precolumbian

1 posted on 02/15/2005 4:44:03 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
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To: Mr. Mojo

"small family of nomads likely used it as a campsite"

Think they were Indians? If not, look out for trouble.


2 posted on 02/15/2005 4:47:52 PM PST by tbird5
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To: Mr. Mojo

Where was Ted Kennedy at the time and was he driving?


3 posted on 02/15/2005 4:47:56 PM PST by mnehrling (cBS- Fourth Column, Fifth Estate, Disinformers)
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To: Mr. Mojo

Mel Brooks go home.


4 posted on 02/15/2005 4:48:20 PM PST by dts32041 (When did the Democratic party stop being the political arm of the KKK?)
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To: Mr. Mojo

Wow! They swung even then!

5 posted on 02/15/2005 4:49:41 PM PST by theDentist (Jerry Springer: PBS for White Trash)
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To: Mr. Mojo

2,000 years, 12,000 years; what's the diff...


6 posted on 02/15/2005 4:51:01 PM PST by billorites (freepo ergo sum)
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To: Mr. Mojo

Am I misreading the article, or is the title wrong?


7 posted on 02/15/2005 4:51:52 PM PST by EggsAckley
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To: mnehrling

Teddy hit Bob Dole once upon a time.......ok, sorry Bob, I love ya......


8 posted on 02/15/2005 4:52:24 PM PST by NorCalRepub
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To: Mr. Mojo

"Conventional wisdom has been that people came across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago."

Let's think outside the box: Maybe people migrated "from" the Americas over the Bering Strait, going "to" Asia. Why is it always assumed that people came from Asia to the Americas?


9 posted on 02/15/2005 4:52:39 PM PST by foofoopowder
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To: Mr. Mojo
Conventional wisdom has been that people came across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago. But Mandel said the northwest Kansas dig means "we're rethinking not only when people arrived, but where they came from."

One if by land and two if by sea?

10 posted on 02/15/2005 4:54:59 PM PST by Coyoteman
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To: Mr. Mojo

The cheech and chong article was posted yesterday...besides , I doun't think even tommy would do a 12,000 year old bone, after all, a man's got to have some boundaries.


11 posted on 02/15/2005 4:55:29 PM PST by pipecorp (I am, therefore, I think...so, what happens when I'm done thinking ?)
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To: Mr. Mojo

I was wondering why I hadn't heard from my mother in law in a while.


12 posted on 02/15/2005 4:56:01 PM PST by ShadowDancer (Vivere est cogitare)
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To: SunkenCiv

GGG ping


13 posted on 02/15/2005 4:57:02 PM PST by Slicksadick (Go out on a limb........Its where the fruit is.)
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To: SunkenCiv

GGG ping


14 posted on 02/15/2005 4:57:17 PM PST by Slicksadick (Go out on a limb........Its where the fruit is.)
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To: Mr. Mojo
Back to my same old dreary song... It would have been easier for early man to have walked (hunting and fishing) across the Atlantic ice sheet from "Europe" to North America than from "Russia" across "beringa" to north America. And it would have been about 5-6KY earlier.

The fact that the Atlantic was 300 miles narrower, and the seas 300' lower, seems to escape academia.

15 posted on 02/15/2005 4:57:51 PM PST by xcamel (Deep Red, stuck in a "bleu" state.)
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To: Mr. Mojo

There is another thread on this. Someplace


16 posted on 02/15/2005 4:59:17 PM PST by RightWhale (Please correct if cosmic balance requires.)
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To: Mr. Mojo

I think some of the bones are mine.


17 posted on 02/15/2005 5:06:20 PM PST by joyce11111
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To: Mr. Mojo

Ha! They found my knees..........


18 posted on 02/15/2005 5:07:48 PM PST by 506trooper (No such thing as too much guns, ammo or fuel on board...unless you're on fire)
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To: Mr. Mojo

More info here as well as photos:

http://www.kgs.ku.edu/General/News/2005/kanorado.html#PHOT


19 posted on 02/15/2005 5:09:16 PM PST by elli1
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To: Mr. Mojo

Buried by 12,001 year old dog. That's old in dog-years.


20 posted on 02/15/2005 5:16:43 PM PST by aroostook war
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To: foofoopowder

seriously?


21 posted on 02/15/2005 5:22:46 PM PST by bencarter
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To: xcamel
It's the ice flow out of the St. Lawrence valley that messes up the Europe to America thesis. Doesn't mean someone didn't get here, but even with the ocean 300 feet lower, and distance 300 miles less, it was still a virtually impossible trek on foot.

Boats were needed ~ Columbus proved that ~ and there was still the problem of all that ice floating around.

Alternatively we can get Europeans to America via Berengia quite easily, whether 35,000 years ago or 12,000 years ago. Their genotype was far more widespread in Eurasia thousands of years ago than it is today.

22 posted on 02/15/2005 5:47:02 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: Mr. Mojo
There are many other potential archaeological sites all over the Great Plains and the Lower Midwest that are more than 10,000 years old.

Unfortunately during several lengthy droughts wind blown loess has covered them up.

23 posted on 02/15/2005 5:49:25 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: xcamel

I have always thought that the Algonkian language family had a strange likeness to the Slavic (in this case it would have been proto-proto slavic)


24 posted on 02/15/2005 5:51:10 PM PST by squarebarb
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To: Mr. Mojo
Conventional wisdom has been that people came across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago.

That's what I thought. This find merely moves that back a few hundred years.

The nomadic & tool-toting Homo Sapien is believed to have emerged in Africa...millions of years ago...wandered north...split at the Europe/Asia-bound fork...continued nomading & tool-toting there until the Ice Age presented the opportunity for the Asian dudes to cross the 'ice bridge' on foot & hunker down in Alaskan igloos...continuing to nomad & tool-tote South to the Americas in what now appears to be ABOUT 13,000 to 12,500 years ago. Later, around 500 years ago, these original, 'native' inhabitants were confronted by the same Euro-trash they had split with long, long ago, when the latter arrived on a clever tool they had developed called the 'boat'. There you have it.

This tendency to wander continues even to this day...always going SOMEWHERE, then returning...driving to distraction anyone who happens to be "...stuck in Folsom Prison...".

25 posted on 02/15/2005 6:13:23 PM PST by O Neill (Aye, Katie Scarlett, the ONLY thing that lasts is the land...)
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To: squarebarb
Yes. And the "St Lawrence Plug" theory falls apart where it meets the continental shelf. The Inuit (who posses a fair chunk of "european" dna) have proved the euro-NA trek was not only possible, but very likely, and could be done in less than a month to 6 weeks.
26 posted on 02/15/2005 6:14:28 PM PST by xcamel (Deep Red, stuck in a "bleu" state.)
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To: muawiyah

One of the most interesting (to me) sites is located in northeast Nebraska, near Oneill at the Ashfalls Fossil Beds. It has some of the best preserved prehistoric fossils of rhino, horse, and camel examples which occurred when volcanic ash covered the area about 10 million years ago. later, ldf


27 posted on 02/15/2005 6:46:17 PM PST by laterldf
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To: tbird5
"small family of nomads likely used it as a campsite"

It was Teddy "the swimmer" Kennedy driven around with that pack of chevy nomads!

28 posted on 02/15/2005 6:54:36 PM PST by patriot_wes (When I see two guys kissin..argh! Is puking a hate crime yet?)
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To: squarebarb

Slavic?

Can you elaborate?

This is a area which has been of interest to me for a long time.

I thought I had spotted a realtionship with Japanese mythology, but don't know enough Russian to do any evaluation on my own.


29 posted on 02/15/2005 6:58:38 PM PST by From many - one. (formerly e p1uribus unum)
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To: Coyoteman
One if by land and two if by sea?

... and I on the opposite shore will be,
ready ro ride and spread trhe alarm,
to every middlesex village and farm.

30 posted on 02/15/2005 7:05:03 PM PST by TheRightGuy (ERROR CODE 018974523: Random Tagline Compiler Failure)
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To: TheRightGuy
... and I on the opposite shore will be,
ready ro ride and spread trhe alarm,
to every middlesex village and farm.

Right, 8th grade! I remember that! Sort of.

Actually, the major debate on the west coast is of an early coastal migration, independent from and probably earlier than the inland migration. This idea explains a lot, including the early Santa Rosa Island skeleton (13,400 years old), and possibly Kennewick and other early skeletal remains from that area.

31 posted on 02/15/2005 8:11:54 PM PST by Coyoteman
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To: Slicksadick; blam; FairOpinion; Ernest_at_the_Beach; SunkenCiv; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; ...
Thanks, Slicksadick. See also the related (slightly older) thread.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest
-- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

32 posted on 02/15/2005 9:32:48 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Ted "Kids, I Sunk the Honey" Kennedy is just a drunk who's never held a job (or had to).)
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To: Mr. Mojo

Well could this then tell us that those days of creation are explained by Peter ?????

II Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing,

that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.


33 posted on 02/15/2005 9:36:41 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: 506trooper

No they're mine!


34 posted on 02/15/2005 9:42:37 PM PST by oneamericanvoice
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To: squarebarb

I can't give you cites for this anymore but I read several years ago that Ojibwe, an Algonkian language, has 600 or more words that are cognates with Old Norse and mean the same thing.

This was first discovered by Henry Schoolcraft, a 19th Century Educator who married an Ojibwe/Chippewa Chief's daughter.

Place names, whose origin has been forgotten, describe in O. N. what one can still see portayed in geographic features.

Just an interesting tidbit that may remain an enigma.


35 posted on 02/15/2005 10:20:47 PM PST by shamusotoole
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To: Mr. Mojo
Sounds about right for a large ice age extinction event. 12,000 years fits with the current ice age cycles. We are due for another round anytime.
36 posted on 02/15/2005 10:28:13 PM PST by Myrddin
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To: SunkenCiv
Wow, I use to live out in that area.

There are some bad blizzards in the winter.

37 posted on 02/15/2005 11:14:12 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (A Proud member of Free Republic ~~The New Face of the Fourth Estate since 1996.)
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To: oneamericanvoice
You're all wrong. Ward Churchill will be there tomorrow morning claiming they're his ancestors.
38 posted on 02/15/2005 11:48:27 PM PST by Heatseeker ("I sort of like liberals now. They’re kind of cute when they’re shivering and afraid." - Ann Coulter)
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To: xcamel

"The fact that the Atlantic was 300 miles narrower, and the seas 300' lower, seems to escape academia."

Must have, because this is the first time I've heard that.

Fascinating.

Maybe that explains Kennewick man, eh?

Hey, Russell Means, get your johnny-come-lately squatter butt off my land!


39 posted on 02/15/2005 11:56:46 PM PST by dsc
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To: Coyoteman

Folks who populated Australia 50,000 years ago had to have a boat. Why couldn't Kennewick man's ancestors have also arrived on boats 35,000 years later?


40 posted on 02/16/2005 6:11:13 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: Mr. Mojo

BTTT and thanks for this


41 posted on 02/16/2005 6:15:31 AM PST by hawkaw
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To: muawiyah
Early coastal migration along the west coast would have been in boats. Probably started in the general area of Indonesia, progressed north (accounting for the Ainu of Japan), along the islands and then down the west coast.

A recent (2002) Ph.D. thesis on mtDNA finds similarities among coastal groups from Vancouver Island to southern California. But inland, you have other groups.

42 posted on 02/16/2005 7:57:09 AM PST by Coyoteman
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To: theDentist

I think that trombone is rusty.


43 posted on 02/16/2005 7:58:29 AM PST by ericthecurdog (NOBODY puts BABY in the corner!!)
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To: patriot_wes

does he smoke camels?


44 posted on 02/16/2005 9:51:03 AM PST by Docbarleypop (Navy Doc)
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To: Docbarleypop
"does he smoke camels?"

I knew you were gonna say that. wonder how the hell they got those suckers lit?

45 posted on 02/16/2005 5:09:25 PM PST by patriot_wes (When I see two guys kissin..argh! Is puking a hate crime yet?)
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Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

46 posted on 10/07/2005 11:14:38 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Sunday, August 14, 2005.)
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