[HN Gopher] Geochronology supports LGM age for human tracks at W...
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Geochronology supports LGM age for human tracks at White Sands, New
Mexico
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/06/study-confirms-white...
Author : gametorch
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-06-19 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| gametorch wrote:
| If this is true, when do you think humans first arrived in North
| America?
|
| From my reading of the article, the dating of these footprints
| (~20k years ago) precludes the idea that humans arrived at _that_
| time. They must have arrived much earlier, because the northern
| part of the content was impassable due to glaciers.
|
| ...Unless they travelled down the Pacific coast of North America
| and then moved east.
| Ccecil wrote:
| Columbia river would be my guess.
|
| Explains the Cooper's ferry evidence in Idaho [1].
|
| I hear there is oral tradition from the coastal and Oregon
| tribes about the glacial "Missoula floods" which took place
| repeatedly between 10k-20k years ago.
|
| [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/artifacts-in-
| idaho...
| gametorch wrote:
| > I hear there is oral tradition from the coastal and Oregon
| tribes about the glacial "Missoula floods" which took place
| repeatedly between 10k-20k years ago.
|
| Very cool.
|
| You can still see the ripples from the proglacial lake in
| Missoula today. [1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_Lake_Missoula#/media
| /F...
| Ccecil wrote:
| I live in Coeur d'alene, ID...which sits in the Purcell
| trench. The floods started just north of here at Clark
| Fork, ID. There is massive evidence of them everywhere you
| look.
|
| One spot, Chilco mountain, if you look towards the trench
| it is all flat and if you look the other way it is all
| mountain/river valleys. This wall separated the floods from
| the non flooded area. Lots of exposed rimrock here too.
| Also the reason we have such a good aquifer here (Rathdrum
| aquifer) which supplys Spokane/Coeur d'alene.
|
| edit: https://iafi.org/ice-age-floods-videos/
| hungmung wrote:
| These floods are likely responsible for bringing the 6th
| largest iron-nickel meteorite ever discovered (on Earth)
| from the Canada/Montana area to Western Oregon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_Meteorite
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't have the references, but I know that there have been
| some discoveries in Latin America and Western South America,
| that have been _very_ old. Probably not "solid" enough for
| many scientists, though.
| octaane wrote:
| I'm glad this has finally been put to rest. Per the Ars article:
| "...that makes for a grand total of 55 radiocarbon results in
| support of the earlier dates across the three studies."
|
| The evidence of much earlier human habitation in the Americas has
| been around for decades, yet has always been shoved aside in
| favor of a hypothesis with all ends tidied up and bound with a
| neat bow. Humans traveling over ice sheets from eurasia to the
| americas never made a huge amount of sense when they could skirt
| it's resource-rich edges - and traveling by water is much faster,
| and much less calorically intensive than traveling by land. You
| also have your food readily available.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > Humans traveling over ice sheets from eurasia to the americas
| never made a huge amount of sense when they could skirt it's
| resource-rich edges - and traveling by water is much faster,
| and much less calorically intensive than traveling by land. You
| also have your food readily available.
|
| ... No-one is suggesting people traveling over ice sheets? In
| fact, the primary reason for the conventional chronology is
| that it avoids any ice sheets.
|
| During the last glacial maximum, the sea level was low enough
| that the entirety of Beringia was above sealevel. It was also
| not covered by ice, and it was one of the richest places for
| hunter-gatherers to live north of the tropics. Think less of a
| land bridge and more of a continent. This allowed access to
| western and central Alaska, but the way forwards was blocked by
| the Laurentide ice sheet, both on the continent and extending
| significantly over the ocean. For someone to cross from Alaska
| to the southern part of the continent, they would have to sail
| over 2000km without access to anything but deep ocean and
| floating ice.
| ab5tract wrote:
| I think the point still stands that there has been a
| desperate clinging to a chronology that denies plenty of
| evidence and essentially all oral tradition of the people in
| question.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Which oral histories allow us to differentiate between the
| various hypotheses for the initial peopling of the
| Americas? I'm not aware of any and it's very difficult to
| identify direct relationships between modern groups and the
| earliest groups. Moreover, operationalizing oral histories
| and tying them to cultural memories of specific historical
| events is difficult at best, since that's not really how
| ancient oral histories get preserved.
| ab5tract wrote:
| Ancient oral histories are preserved through constant
| communication across generational boundaries.
|
| There are too many examples of oral history matching
| historical events for me to bother being your Google
| here.
|
| Very little weight has been given to the accuracy of
| these oral histories until recent times. Meanwhile tribes
| have been saying "that's not how it happened" to the
| Clovis hypothesis the entire time.
| perrygeo wrote:
| > For someone to cross from Alaska to the southern part of
| the continent, they would have to sail over 2000km without
| access to anything but deep ocean and floating ice.
|
| Not exactly. The leading explanation is the "Kelp Highway"
| theory - the complex coastal geography of SE Alaska and ocean
| currents could have created a small pockets of ice-free land
| and given access to rich marine resources. You could
| effectively island hope down the inland passage until you hit
| the Columbia river. Having made it to Australia 50kya, we
| know at least some prehistoric humans had the maritime
| technology to pull it off.
|
| My take is, it seems likely that at least some of the
| Beringians made it south of the ice wall during the glacial
| maxima. If the ice wall was indeed impenetrable 25kya (ie the
| kelp highway theory is wrong) , the White Sands footprints
| must have come from people who migrated even earlier.
| WalterGR wrote:
| Here's University of Arizona's announcement / article:
| https://news.arizona.edu/news/earliest-evidence-humans-ameri...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44313137
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