Posted on 12/17/2006 4:21:22 PM PST by blam
Penon Woman
Penon Woman
Scientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World. The skeleton's perfectly preserved skull belonged to a 26-year-old woman who died during the last ice age on the edge of a giant prehistoric lake which once formed around an area now occupied by the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City.
Scientists from Liverpool's John Moores University and Oxford's Research Laboratory of Archaeology have dated the skull to about 13,000 years old, making it 2,000 years older than the previous record for the continent's oldest human remains. The most intriguing aspect of the skull is that it is long and narrow and typically Caucasian in appearance, like the heads of white, western Europeans today. Modern-day Native Americans have short, wide skulls, typical of their Mongoloid ancestors, who are known to have crossed into America from Asia on an ice-age land bridge that had formed across the Bering Strait.
The extreme age of Peñon woman has introduced two scenarios. Possibly there was a much earlier migration of Caucasian-like people with long, narrow skulls across the Bering Strait and these people were later replaced by a subsequent migration of Mongoloid people; or alternatively, and more controversially, a group of Stone Age people from Europe made the perilous sea journey across the Atlantic Ocean many thousands of years before Columbus or the Vikings. The first Americans may have actually been Europeans. They were definitely not Mongoloid in appearance.
The skull and the almost-complete skeleton of Peñon woman were originally unearthed in 1959 and were thought to be no older than about 5,000 years. Peñon woman formed part of a collection of 27 early humans in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, that had not been accurately dated using the most modern techniques. In 2002, at the insistence of geologist Silvia Gonzalez, who had a hunch the bones were older than previously thought; the remains were taken to Oxford University to be carbon-dated. Small bone samples from five skeletons were analyzed using the latest carbon techniques, and dated the skull to about 13,000 years old. The study was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Human Evolution.
At 13,000 years old, Peñon woman would have lived at a time when there was a vast, shallow lake in the Basin of Mexico, a naturally enclosed high plain around today's Mexico City, which would have been cooler and much wetter than it is today. Huge mammals would have roamed the region's grasslands, such as the world's largest mammoths with 12-foot tusks, bear-sized giant sloths, armadillos as big as a car and fearsome carnivores such as the saber-toothed tiger and great black bear. The bones of Peñon woman, named after the "little heel" of land that would have jutted into the ancient lake, were well developed and healthy, showing no signs of malnutrition. The two oldest skulls analyzed were both dolichocephalic, meaning that they were long and narrow-headed. The younger ones were short and broad, brachycephalic, which are typical of today's Native Americans and their Mongoloid ancestors from Asia.
The findings have a resonance with the skull and skeleton of Kennewick man, who was unearthed in 1996 in the Columbia River at the town of Kennewick in Washington state. The skull, estimated to be 8,400 years old, is also long and narrow and typically Caucasian.
...the GPS data for South American data show that South America and Africa were joined between 87,000 and 2,000 years ago... I can't vouch for the source - or the detail...Doesn't look good to me, but I'm just a meatball anyway. :')
When were the americas peopled?
William R. Corliss
Science Frontiers No. 51: May-Jun 1987
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf051/sf051a01.htm
http://www.jpdawson.com/pelgnet/resum.html
just found his CV.
Africa and South America split 120 million years ago. They have been moving apart at the same speed your fingernails grow ever since.
OH S**T where that come from ROFL
Do Palaeogeographic Data support the Expanding Earth Hypothesis?
JÁN VEIZER
Department of Geophysics and Geochemistry, Australian National University, Canberra
THE question of the contraction, stability or expansion of the Earth during geological time is one of the basic problems of the geosciences.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v229/n5285/abs/229480a0.html
methinks the question might still be open...?
Not for me...120 million years works just fine, lol.
"Absolutely fascinating, blam. If I keep up with these posts, I may eventually understand something about all of this. Between this and Kennewiick man, it seems there was something that went on in human history that we know almost nothing about."
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There are also records / remains of tall caucasions who lived in the area of western China.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1255447/posts
Add that to your growing list of weirdness....LOL
I will. Thanks.
At 13,000 years, how does this compare with old skeletons from the Old World?
"Image: JOHN GURCHE PORTRAIT OF A PIONEER With a brain half the size of a modern one and a brow reminiscent of Homo habilis, this hominid is one of the most primitive members of our genus on record. Paleoartist John Gurche reconstructed this 1.75-million-year-old explorer from a nearly complete teenage H. erectus skull and associated mandible found in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. The background figures derive from two partial crania recovered at the site."
Earliest European Modern Human Found
"A research team co-directed by Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has dated a human jawbone from a Romanian bear hibernation cave to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago. That makes it the earliest known modern human fossil in Europe. "
There are New World monkeys, but no New World apes except us. I understand that the oldest Old World signs, cave paintings and cave art items, may be 70,000 years old. It would be interesting if something like that is found in the New World, but what about that 200,000 year old stuff in California?
Yeah, that is about right. The cave art mostly seems to have begun about 40,000 years ago, although a 70,000 year old site may have been found. Before that, nothing, except California.
Calico: A 200,000 Year Old Site In The Ameicas?
I'll guess they were Homo-Erectus?
Art?
An 80,000 year old necklace was found with the 'Hobbits' in Indonesia. The Jury is till out on who they were/are.
The link is gone. The site is a mystery. Or maybe it isn't a mystery until a full professor discovers that it is a mystery. In any case there is no evidence of New World apes except us, no ancestors.
Is 80,000 years old the oldest in the Old World? That would give them time to migrate from California.
Do they all drive cars adorned by fish with feet to mock Christians? I think they need to study human migration before they write the evolution story. The whole "science" seems backwards.
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