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Al Goodyear and the Secrets of the Ancient AmericansUSC Professor Discovers 50,000 Year-Old Artifacts in S.C. BY RON AIKEN It was the summer of 1998, and University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear had a problem on his hands. Fourteen years of digging at an ancient chert quarry outside Allendale had begun to bear fruit: At a site called Big Pine Tree, Goodyear was well on his way to establishing that a substantial Clovis population lived here. If you’ll recall your history lessons from high school, the Clovis people — named such because the first evidence of them was found...

Anne Jeffreys, the actress and opera singer who likely had her greatest impact on TV audiences as Marion Kerby “the ghostess with the mostess” in the 1950s TV series “Topper,” has died. She was 94. Jeffreys, whose husband, actor Robert Sterling, died in 2006, died peacefully in her sleep at her Los Angeles home on Wednesday evening, her manager Don Gibble said Thursday. More recently, she spent two decades playing Amanda Barrington on “General Hospital” She was featured in the role of the wealthy on more than 350 episodes of the soap opera from 1984 until 2004. In “Topper,” she...

Msgr. Vincent Topper, the oldest and longest-serving priest in the country, died Oct. 7. He was 104 years old and celebrated the 80th anniversary of his Ordination to Priesthood on May 24 of this year. According to research done by Zenit News he may have been the longest ordained diocesan priest in the world. “His life was a shining example of fidelity and cooperation with God’s grace in a selfless and dedicated manner,” Bishop Ronald Gainer said of Msgr. Topper, who was a priest of the Diocese of Harrisburg for 80 years. “He has seen and personally experienced so much...

Immigrants from the Other Side? According to the Clovis-First theory, for decades the gospel preached by authorities on the peopling of the Americas, the first Americans walked across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia about 12,000 years ago, and after finding a corridor through the Cordilleran Ice Sheet--admittedly it wasn't an easy trip and the timing was tricky--descended into temperate North America. We know them by their classic fluted points, unlike any others in the world, they left at campsites on their journey south to populate Central and South America. [~ 45:l ~] There have been variations of the basic...

Impossibly Old America? Volume 59 Number 3, May/June 2006 by Mike Toner New sites and controversial theories fuel the debate over the origins of America's first people. Archaeologist Al Goodyear believes people were at South Carolina's Topper site 50,000 years ago. (Mike Toner) Al Goodyear's renowned barbecued pig is roasting on the grill a mile away, but the 200 professional and amateur archaeologists peering into the steep-walled pit where he's standing have other things on their minds. Goodyear, director of the University of South Carolina's Allendale Paleoindian Expedition, is explaining why he thinks people were here--on the banks of the...

In a grassy meadow where eons ago some of America's first settlers camped and chipped stone tools, a precisely dug dirt pit, four yards square, is sinking steadily into the dark soil. And as it descends at a rate of an inch or two a day, the remote excavation northwest of Austin is also traveling backward through the millennia toward the continent's first native people... If all goes well, perhaps quite soon, primitive stone tools, similar to those discovered here a few years ago, will again be unearthed, reinforcing an emerging, if once controversial theory, about when the first humans...

Images: Pamela Patrick MAMMOTH HUNTER OR FISH CATCHER? Archaeologists had concluded that the first inhabitants of the New World were fur-clad big-game hunters who swept across the Bering land bridge in pursuit of their prey. But recent evidence suggests that the first settlers may have been just as likely to hunt small game, catch fish or gather plants as they moved through more temperate environments. The leaf-shaped spearpoint I'm holding is surprisingly dainty--for a deadly weapon. I let my mind wander, trying to imagine life some 14,700 years ago in the marshes of southern Chile, where this relic was ...

Bulls Scarp could be the most fascinating and important archaeological site waiting to be surveyed in the region. There’s just one little problem: That Ice Age rock ledge is under about 140 feet of seawater.But a team of scientists recently studied and mapped it from the ocean surface. Now the team is looking for partners to go back.“We haven’t been on the bottom to look for artifacts and that’s what we’re trying to do. We feel very strongly this area would have held populations of people,” said Scott Harris, College of Charleston geology professor.“I think it’s fantastic. I can just...

Fire Pit Dated to Be Over 50,000 Years Old Thu Nov 18,10:10 AM ET Top Stories - AP By AMY GEIER EDGAR, Associated Press Writer COLUMBIA, S.C. - In the growing debate about when people first appeared on this continent, a leading archaeologist said Wednesday he has discovered what could be sooty evidence of human occupation in North America tens of thousands of years earlier than is commonly believed.University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear said he has uncovered a layer of charcoal from a possible hearth or fire pit at a site near the Savannah River. Samples from the...

'First Americans' may be Johnnies-come-lately By MIKE TONER The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 08/20/04 Human history is being written —and rewritten — a shovelful at a time on a shaded hillside along the Savannah River. Each summer Al Goodyear's team of archaeologists digs deeper into the riverbank in South Carolina's Allendale County. Each summer the story of the first Americans, the primitive hunters who first populated the continent, grows longer. And more complex. And more controversial. David Tulis/AJC (ENLARGE) Archaeologist Al Goodyear holds a hand-made 'microblade,' one of the hundreds of artifacts unearthed during his team's seven years of excavations...

The University of South Carolina is accepting registrations from volunteers to help excavate archaeological sites along the Savannah River April 30-June 2. The expedition will be led by archaeologist Albert Goodyear, whose discoveries at the Topper site in Allendale County have captured international media attention. Volunteers will learn excavation techniques and how to identify Clovis and pre-Clovis artifacts in several prehistoric chert quarries. This year, some volunteers may also be involved in the excavation of a nearby Paleoamerican site known as the Charles site. The cost is $488 per week ($400 is tax-deductible) and includes evening lectures and programs, lunch...

Ancient stone tools discovered in South Carolina Finds at Savannah River site could rewrite America's history By LIZ MITCHELL McClatchy NewspapersPublished on: 06/17/08 HILTON HEAD, S.C. — A local man has unearthed two ancient stone tools in an archaeological dig in Allendale County, S.C., a rare find that could provide more information about how early Americans lived. And if more evidence proves the artifact is a new type of tool and one archaeologists haven't found before, it could be named after Matthew Carey of Hilton Head Island. The 22-year-old University of South Carolina anthropology major volunteered at the Topper Site...

Will work at Allendale County archaeological dig rewrite human history? By LIZ MITCHELL Published Sunday, June 8, 2008 Photo: Cynthia Curry of Charlotte holds up a piece of quartz she discovered at Topper on Wednesday. Jay Karr/The Island Packet More than 13,000 years ago, South Carolina was a wild kingdom alive with all sorts of beasts: saber-tooth tigers, beavers the size of Great Danes, camels, elephants and mastodons. Until recently, these animals were believed to have vanished before the first Americans -- called the Clovis people -- arrived about 13,000 years ago from Asia via the Bering Sea land bridge....

Site provides evidence for ancient comet explosion JOEY HOLLEMAN; McClatchy Newspapers Published: October 7th, 2007 01:00 AM COLUMBIA, S.C. – For the second time in less than a decade, a South Carolina river bluff holds evidence pointing to a theory with history-rewriting potential. Microscopic soil particles from the Topper site near Allendale might hold a tiny key to a big theory: that comet-caused explosions wiped out the mammoths and mastodons, prompted the last ice age and decimated the first human culture in North America about 12,900 years ago. The comet theory first began generating a buzz at an international meeting...

June 28, 2007 Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people A theory put forth by a group of 25 geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada, possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and pushing the earth into another ice age. University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear said the theory may not be such "out-of-this-world" thinking based on his study of ancient stone-tool artifacts he and his team have excavated from the Topper dig site in Allendale, as well as ones found in Georgia, North Carolina and...

Posted on Thu, Oct. 27, 2005 Clovis speakers discuss man's origins in the United States MEG KINNARD Associated Press COLUMBIA, S.C. - A University of Texas archaeologist opened the highly anticipated "Clovis in the Southeast" conference at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center Thursday by rejecting the premise on which many experts once based their theories on man's North American origins. At the meeting, sponsored in part by the University of South Carolina, Michael Collins called the idea that the first inhabitants traveled by way of a land bridge from Asia "primal racism." Instead, Collins said, they arrived by water, because...

A contentious theory that the first Americans came here from Europe - not Asia - is challenging a century-old consensus among archaeologists, and a dig in Kenosha County is part of the evidence. The two leading proponents of the Europe theory admit that many scientists reject their contention, instead holding fast to the long-established belief that the first Americans arrived from Siberia via a now-submerged land bridge across the Bering Sea to Alaska. The first of the Europe-to-North America treks probably took place at the height of the last Ice Age more than 18,000 years ago, said Dennis Stanford, ...

University of South Carolina archeologist Al Goodyear said he has uncovered a layer of charcoal from a possible hearth or fire pit at a site near the Savannah River. Samples from the layer have been laboratory-dated to more than 50,000 years old. Yet Goodyear stopped short of declaring it proof of the continent's earliest human occupation. "It does look like a hearth," he said, "and the material that was dated has been burned." ...Goodyear, who has worked the Topper site since 1981, discovered the charcoal layer in May.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A supernova could be the "quick and dirty" explanation for what may have happened to an early North American culture, a nuclear scientist here said Thursday. Richard Firestone said at the "Clovis in the Southeast" conference that he thinks "impact regions" on mammoth tusks found in Gainey, Mich., were caused by magnetic particles rich in elements like titanium and uranium. This composition, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist said, resembles rocks that were discovered on the moon and have also been found in lunar meteorites that fell to Earth about 10,000 years ago. Firestone said that, based...

Kennewick Man, meet your distant cousins By Kate Riley Monday, November 7, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM COLUMBIA, S.C. — Discerning the story of America's prehistoric past is a bit like groping through an unfamiliar room in the dark. One learned scientist's tattooing tool is another's piece of rock. Ask them to agree how long it has been there and you're bound to set off an argument that makes Seattle's whether-to-monorail conflict seem like a tea party. So it goes with evolving thought in archaeology. We all know the prevailing theory. Our children's high-school textbooks talk about the...