At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/evidence-is-building-that-people-were-in-the-americas-23-000-years-ago …. I thought this was done and dusted but perhaps not. The resistance is strong. However, analysis of ancient human footprints in New Mexico proffers new evidence, it is alleged. The date indicates humans were walking around in the Americas as early as 23,000 years ago. The information is derived from C14 dating of organic sediments – core samples from the site and believed to be contemporary with the footprints. In fact, it looks very much like the footprints were preserved for posterity precisely because they were buried in the sediment in question. Footprints are fleeting moments in time – and their preservation requires special circumstances to prevail. Not only that, the footprints are not the only thing preserved as the paleo lake and river system at the site has also been deduced from exactly the same sedimentary organic matter, such as pollen and seeds. We therefore have a Late Glacial Maximum ecosystem that is quite unlike the one in New Mexico in the modern world. It had a temperature climate – with plenty of precipitation. Unlike the dry conditions now. However, climate change is not the thrust of this study. Dating the footprints is.
It seems some elements in mainstream are having difficulty in thinking in terms of humans in the Americas as early as the Late Glacial Maximum [roughly 30,000 t0 18,000 years ago]. Are they still in the straitjacket of Clovis First dogma? They have had to concede humans were in the Americas a few thousand years prior to Clovis – but only after the Oldest Dryas event when climate had warmed up. The footprints were originally dated between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago in a study back in 2021. This led to a noisy rebuttal – in which the C14 sampling of seeds from a water plant were questioned. They grow in water and C14, notoriously, can be skewed by old water, it is thought. This after all was the reason given for a date 180 years too early derived from the ruins of Nineveh. No chance it was the calibration curve that was at fault – it must have been the fact the inhabitants ate a lot of fish out of the Tigris. It seems like this deduction, very thin at the time, has been swallowed by mainstream – wholesale. The result was a scathing research paper that accused the archaeologists of kidding themselves – and everybody else. They claimed the C14 results were dodgy and the whole thrust of the dating of the footprints should be declared unproven.
Did they hope the archaeologists would high tail it and they would hear no more? What they got was a stronger case made by the original team. They used simulated luminescence [OSL] methodology and still came up with the same dates. However, currently, this is not enough for the scientists in denial – even as other archaeologists chipped in with their own research. We now have 55 separate C14 dates of seeds in mud, and pollen samples from the sedimentary layer that preserved the footprints. They all support a date between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago – or somewhere close to it. Yet, people are still resisting the data. They think it must somehow be faulty as they do not like the idea of humans in the Americas as early as the LGM. It may be that the date will have to be lowered to somewhere close to 18,000 years ago. Yet, even that would imply humans were in the Americas as early as the LGM [late glacial maximum]. They have a dilemma that will only be resolved with further archaeological investigation elsewhere – further afield from New Mexico.