Ancient Tools At High Desert Site Go Back 135,000 Years (California)

BARSTOW - In the multicolored hills overlooking the Mojave River Valley, the excavation of stone tools and flakes reveals human activities from the distant past. A new system of geologic dating has confirmed that an alluvial deposit bearing the stone tools and flakes at the Calico archaeological site is about 135,000 years old.

Calico project director Fred Budinger Jr. said a soil sample, taken at a depth of 17 1/2 feet in one of three master pits at the dig near Yermo, verifies that the deposit dates to the Middle Pleistocene Epoch - the Ice Age.

"This new date confirms earlier estimates that humans were in the Manix Basin, near the base of the Calico Mountains, as early as 125,000 to 200,000 years ago," Budinger said.

The dating system, known as thermo-luminescence, reflects the amount of time that has elapsed since a layer of sediment was exposed to sunlight.

Another system, called uranium-thorium dating, pushed the age of sedimentary layers at the digging site to about 200,000 years ago.

But studies now under way with beryllium 10, an element used in dating exposed surfaces, could open the door into the more distant geological past.

"Beryllium 10 can date rock forms back almost to the formation of Earth itself,' said Budinger, senior archaeologist with Tetra Tech Inc., an environmental engineering and consulting firm with offices in San Bernardino.

Meanwhile, another system of dating known as optically stimulated luminescence also may be used to determine the age of artifact-bearing beds at the Calico site. This system is used to date sand dune layers.

Lewis Owen, a former geology professor at UC Riverside and now with the University of Cincinnati, is in charge of the new research.

"No other archaeological site has made use of these dating methods," Budinger said. "And until we get results (from Owen), expected this winter, we say the Calico site is 100,000 to 200,000 years old."

Humans who inhabited the Manix Basin chipped tools from chalcedony and chert, rocks that break like glass, to serve as scrapers, choppers, gravers, saws and digging tools. The Calico area was a workshop, and no direct evidence of man, such as bones or teeth, have been found at the site.

Manix Lake, a 91-square-mile freshwater lake extending from present-day Yermo to Afton Canyon, drained 18,000 years ago. A unique combination of environmental factors - erosion, faulting, and folding - exposed the alluvial deposits.

Excavations at the Calico Early Man site, often simply called the Calico Digs, began in November 1964.

world-renowned archaeologist Louis Leakey, famed for discoveries with his wife, Mary, at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania over three decades.

Among their finds was Zinjanthropus, an early man dating back 1.75 million years. Louis Leakey was project director at Calico from 1965 until his death in 1972.

San Bernardino County archaeologist Ruth DeEtte Simpson, field director under Leakey, then became project director.

Calico's current site manager, retired electronics engineer Chris Christensen, served as Leakey's chauffeur and body guard.

"The archaeological world was concerned with his safety out here," Christensen recalled.

"Volunteers from as far away as Berkeley and San Diego take part in digs the first weekend of every month from October through May," he said. "Some are professional geologists and archaeologists."

Since excavations began, more than 64,000 tools, flakes and stone chips have been collected at Calico, said Johanna Lytle, president of the nonprofit Friends of Calico. Most are housed in the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands.

Extensive improvements have been added to the site, which includes three master digging pits and 22 test pits.

"One of Louis Leakey's favorite tools was 'the Calico Cutter,' as he called it," Christensen said, displaying a replica of the artifact in the small museum on the grounds. "It shows bifacial flaking and use-wear patterns ... evidence of human activity that could not be caused by nature."

The site, two miles off Interstate 15 at Minneola Road, attracts visitors from across the nation and around the world.

"While my wife and I are very interested in ancient man, this is our first chance to see a dig of consequence," Dennis said. "People who visit Calico have a rare opportunity to see an actual excavation site."

"You can actually get the feel of an old civilization here," said Patricia. "You get a chance to touch our human past."

First Americans - Homo Erectus in America

Were the first Americans the makers of the Clovis Points or did man arrive here at a much earlier time? This Website is a home for those who believe that Homo Erectus or Archaic Homo Sapiens (pre Homo Sapiens Sapiens) found their way to this continent at a much earlier time than is currently in vogue among archeologists.

It is currently in its planning stages and any suggestions by like minded individuals are welcome. The site will contain at least the following:

A page devoted to the Calico Early Man Site, selected for excavation by Dr. Louis Leakey, which has yield man made artifacts between 100,000 and 200,000 years old.

A discussion of Native American legend and tradition that holds that they did not come over the land bridge from Siberia. What then were their origins? Could they have become a people here, in America, as their traditions tell them by evolving from Homo Erectus already living on this continent just as Chinese evolved from Asian Homo Erectus, and Europeans from Homo Erectus living there, etc.

The Fallacy of Clovis

Those who believe man arrived in the Americas only shortly before leaving proof of his presence in the form of the famous Clovis Points, circa 12,000 years ago, will have serious difficulty in reconciling this theory with discoveries on going in the Eastern Calico Mountains of California’s Mojave Desert. Under the direction of Ruth Dee Simpson and at the urging the century’s foremost Archaeologist, Louis Leakey, a major archaeological dig has been on going there for the last 33 years.

The purpose of this first installment on the Homo Erectus -- The First Americans website is a discussion of surface lithics (stone tools) found in the general area of the Simpson/Leakey dig site and their implications for the Clovis School who believe man only arrived in the Americas within the last twelve or thirteen thousand years. Extensive quotes will be made from Simpson’s newly released “The Lake Manix Lithic Industry” published as the San Bernardino County Museum Association Quarterly Volume 45, Numbers 3 & 4. Serious students are urged to purchase the entire study. For information concerning purchase E-mail jreynold@co.san-bernardino.ca.us. All passages in quotation marks in this section are from Ms. Simpson’s work and we thank her for the scholarship that makes this section possible.

While the author of this webpage does not believe that Homo Erectus is responsible for the surface lithics found in the Calico Mountains of California, he does believe the presence of these lithics is quite important in establishing the fact that man was on this continent eons before those of the Clovis school are willing to admit. Once the door is thrown open to an earlier arrival date for man on this continent, then serious study will hopefully begin on the many early man sites to be found in both North and South America, but currently ignored because of their threat to the comfortable group of academics who have built careers around Clovis.

As Ruth Simpson points out: "In 1926 the discovery of man-made weapon points in the skeleton of an extinct species of bison near Folsom, New Mexico, ushered in a new era of American archaeological research. Since then, prehistorians and geologists have been searching the North American continent for conclusive evidence relating to human presence during the Pleistocene. Most of the early localities which have aroused the greatest scientific interest in North America are characterized by artifact assemblages that include diagnostic weapon points." These sites have been identified with the sobriquet “Paleo-Indian,” as if it all began there. But does it?

No!

"Behind the Paleo-Indian horizon lies a vast sweep of antiquity. Bits of evidence wrested from the silent sediments and relict landforms of the Pleistocene suggest that humans roamed North America long before 50,000 years ago. A few of the challenging elements of the newly established and newly accredited facet of American archaeology we call Pleistocene prehistory."

"One of the best evidences of this is the Manix Basin situated in eastern San Bernardino County, east of Barstow" California. "The basin is surrounded by the Calico, Lane, Alvord, Cave, Cady, Rodman and Newberry Mountains. During at least the late phases of the Pleistocene, the basin was filled with water furnished in part by the Mojave River which drains the high desert and Transverse Range to the south. This recurring lake was Pleistocene Lake Manix." "During late Pleistocene pluvial stages, four fillings of Manix Basin with water are recognized (Buwalda, 1914; Jefferson, 1968,.1985). Fillings terminated at the end of the last pluvial or wet period and because of downcutting by the Mojave River through the Cave Mountains at the end of Manix Basin. This downcutting developed Afton Canyon. Sequential shorelines left by Lake Manix are present at the 1880', 1840', 1800' and 1780' elevations. Radiocarbon dates on Anodonta shell reported by Bassett and Jefferson (1972) suggest that the major lake stand which left the 1780' shoreline ended prior to 47,000 B.P. and that this shoreline is of Tenaya or earlier age. Dates on Anodonta shell along the 1800' shoreline (Berger and Libby, 1966) correspond well and suggest that a relatively brief stand of the lake at 1800' is of Tioga age and the lake may have drained by 19,000 B.P., briefly occupying the 1780' shoreline again during recession. The modern Mojave River, cutting down through the lake sediments associated with the 1780' stand, has exposed abundant vertebrate fossils that support a Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age coinciding with the 47,000 B.P. date.The two shorelines at 1880' and 1780' elevation are well defined."

The reason the author quotes Ms. Simpson on the dates for the shorelines is the fact that stone tools are found on the surface of the desert in the Manix Basin. However, they are found above the ancient lake’s 1780 foot elevation shoreline. As she points out: "There are several major high beaches and shorelines of Lake Manix. One of these at 1780 feet above sea level has been dated by tufa at ± 19,750 B.P. Above that shoreline there is a marked change in artifact type and distribution. These tools include ovate bifaces, hand-axe like tools, choppers, scrapers, hammerstones, cutting tools, and the like. All imply percussion flaking whereas many of the more recent specimens imply pressure flaking. Radiocarbon dates of circa 19,750 years for the 1780' shoreline and the abrupt change in artifact assemblages at that elevation suggest that artifacts above the 1780' shoreline are related in time to a filling of Lake Manix prior to 20,000 years ago."

More modern, pressure flaked tools are found through out the area, but the primative percussion flaked tools are only found above the shoreline of the now dry lake. The obvious conclusion to draw from this evidence is that at a time when the lake was filled to the extent that its shoreline had an elevation of 1780 foot above sea level, a primative culture existed along its shores. The two most recent times that the lake stood at this level were 19,750 and 47,000 years BP (before present). The more recent date is almost twice the age of the Clovis sites, while the older date approaches four times that of Clovis. The author of this website prefers the more recent date, not out of any fear of the more ancient date, but merely out of practicality. It was at the time of the last filling of Lake Manix to the 1780 foot level that the lake broke through a natural barrier in the area of today’s Afton Canyon and drained into the Colorado River Basin, never to fill again. With the loss of Manix Lake the Pleistocene herds that roamed is shores would have moved on to better pastures and so would the men that hunted them. This seems to best explain the evidence found atop the surface of today’s Mojave Desert.

* * * It seems ironic that scientists seem to have no problem with bison, mastodon, horses, and myrads of other creatures finding their way from Siberia to North America across the land bridge, that existed off and on between the two during periods of high glaciation over the last half million years, yet balk at the idea that man could also have achieved a crossing. Why?

Part of the problem may have its roots in feelings that are not even conscious, but nevertheless influence attitudes and thought processes giving moderns a general feeling of superiority over our ancestors. This viewpoint is constantly bolstered by Hollywood and authors of popular fiction, as they portray early man as a bunch of grunting savages. In consequence there is resistance every time a rogue archaeologist attempts to push back in time some important discovery, be it fire, art, or North America.

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