Wednesday, September 13, 2017

In our current update on 'History: it be messy',

New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
But wait!  There's MORE!
The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago - long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago - and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material.

What’s more, chemical analysis carried out last year on a European-style stone knife found in Virginia back in 1971 revealed that it was made of French-originating flint.

Plus some DNA evidence.

I like seeing things like this partly- mostly- because "New information!  Good!", and partly because things like this cause the "We know how the world happened, and that's that!" people to lose their shit.  And, also, it will cause some of the Indian* activist types to crap bricks; proof that people came to these continents at all from the European direction will really screw with the "This Is Our Land, And Always Was" line.

Yes, on some things I just enjoy having the PC Narrative screwed with.  But mostly I love the finding of new information on the past.



*Because 'Native American?  So am I, and my parents, and theirs, and theirs, and so on.'  I think Canada had a better idea with calling them First Nations.  Except this will really mess with that, too.

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