Posted on 02/28/2015 2:26:30 AM PST by Citizen Zed
In Florida, archaeologists are investigating a site that a century ago sparked a scientific controversy. Today, it's just a strip of land near an airport.
But in 1915, it was a spot that became world-famous because of the work of Elias Sellards, Florida's state geologist. Sellards led a scientific excavation of the site, where workers digging a drainage canal found fossilized animal bones and then, human remains.
Andy Hemmings of Mercyhurst University is the lead archaeologist on a project that has picked up where Sellards left off a century ago.
"Quite literally, where we're standing, they found what they, at the time, dubbed 'skeleton two' and 'skeleton three.' It turns out it's actually one individual, now known as Vero Man," Hemmings says.
The human remains were in a layer of soil that also contained bones from animals that lived in Florida during the Ice Age: mastodons, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats.
Sellards said this was proof that people lived in Florida during the Ice Age, at least 14,000 years ago. At the time, most scientists believed humans had been in the New World no longer than 6,000 years.
An anthropologist from the Smithsonian, Ales Hrdlicka, led the charge attacking Sellards' findings. Hrdlicka believed the human remains were of someone who lived much later and had been buried in the lower strata. Vero Man was discredited and became largely an archaeological footnote.
But in Vero Beach, Fla., a quiet community known mostly for its citrus groves, Sandra Rawls says the site of Sellards' investigation, and its potential, was never forgotten. Several years ago, Rawls and others in the community formed a nonprofit group, the Old Vero Ice Age Sites Committee, or OVIASC.
(Excerpt) Read more at mtpr.org ...
Sellards said this was proof that people lived in Florida during the Ice Age, at least 14,000 years ago>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They were likely Vikings from L’ Anse au Meadows on Winter vacation.
Wasn’t there a post a few days back stating that people who ate ocean fish resulted in carbon dating being messed up...I might be mis-quoting that...I was just reading the tear lines and intro paragraph while browsing...something to do with sea salt...
Salty Dogs. Get you every time <:-0
Actually read something to that effect recently.
Actually this was on a History Channel show.
America Unearthed a pretty bogus show by a so called ‘forensic geologist’ Scott Wolter. 1 step above ancient aliens. Though some of the episodes including this one is ok
One of the biggest problems of geology/archeology, is determining what happened BEFORE a proven event. While finding an accurately determined 10,000 year old human bone is certainly strong evidence that a human was there 10,000 years ago, it provides no evidence that humans were absent prior to 10,000 years ago. It is entirely possible that humans were there 50,000 years ago, and simply no evidence of it has yet been found.
Maybe this was the very first archaeologist’s bone collection? And he wanted to be buried with his collection.
Spring training, actually.
An interesting post. Last night, completely by chance while channel surfing, I came across the Discovery Family Channel (never watched it) and stopped when I saw the beginning scroll for a show premised on people coming to North America from Europe during the last great ice age 17,000 via an ice bridge across the North Atlantic.
the show began with the discovery of a flint spearhead of a type not seen in North America until around 6,000 BC, but this one is dated at 17,000 years old and is of the same design as those in Southern France of the same era.
It was an interesting show and somewhat plausible. But they also dug up DNA linkage of Indians in north-east Canada who have about 1/4 European DNA in them, and the DNA folks said that the linkage date is over 10,000 years ago.
And the unintended point of the show was information that North America was covered with 1 mile of ice and when it melted the oceans rose 500 feet; thus planet made global warming gave us the world we have today where mankind survives and thrives.
Here are links to the show:
http://documentaryheaven.com/iceage-columbus-who-were-the-first-americans/
http://store.discovery.com/ice-age-columbus-who-were-the-first-americans-dvd/detail.php?p=84844
Thanks GreyFriar for the pings and the links. Vero Man ping! BTW, imho, US study of the PreColumbian past would have been best served in the long term if someone had just blown Ales Hrdlicka's brains out before he took over the Smithsonian. If I ever have a time machine...
Anyone know anything about this one?
Before Columbus: Early Voyages to the Americas
By Don L. Wulffson
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Columbus-Voyages-Americas-Exceptional/dp/0822559781
Fish based diets cause archaeological dating problems
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3260880/posts
Very interesting. Thanks for the ping and the links.
I never heard of it before your ping.
Saw that show. Was very UNimpressed.
Very interesting!
Yeah pretty bad. The worst popular tripe. Bigfoot meets ancient aliens meets ghost hunters.
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