It is now generally accepted that the first people in America appeared during the last glaciation, which led to a significant decrease in sea level. From Siberia to Novy Svet, they crossed the bridge formed then, which is sometimes called Beringia - in honor of the Bering Strait that now overlies it. However, modern excavations indicate that people in America appeared much earlier.
History with "map facts"
In this sense, the excavations of the Texas Street site near San Diego, carried out by the American anthropologist George F. Carter in 1949-1957, are very interesting. Then Carter said that he was able to find furnaces and rough tools made of stone - the so-called eoliths, whose age is estimated at 80-90 thousand years and corresponds to the last interglacial period. Critics only laughed at these statements, dubbing Carter's findings "map facts." His name was later publicly tarnished in a Harvard Fantastic Archeology course. However, George F. Carter was guided by clear criteria to distinguish the stone tools he found from the debris that had acquired their current shape as a result of natural forces. Stone Age archaeologists have argued for the validity of Carter's conclusions.
In 1973, the vilified scientist undertook a more thorough exploration of Texas Street, inviting a number of archaeologists to come and see the site with their own eyes. However, almost no one responded to his invitation. According to Carter, "Scientists from the University of San Diego flatly refused to even look at the work carried out at their side." Nevertheless, Carter found followers. In the 1970s and 80s. excavations in the San Diego area were undertaken by Herbert L. Minshall and James R. Moriarty. They, in particular, found another site - Buchanan Canyon, dating back over 60 thousand years. There, too, were found primitive stone tools in the form of boulders chipped from one side.
In the 1980s, they were joined by Brian "OK" Reeves, John D. Paul and Jason W. Smith, who explored the Pleistocene horizons at La Hoya, Del Mar, Tory Pines and Auteuil Reeves. They found human bones, among other things, and dated them according to the method of Jeffrey L. Bud based on the analysis of racemization of amino acids. It turned out that the remains are from 27 to 46 thousand years old. However, later these bones were additionally subjected to conventional radiocarbon analysis, and he determined their age at only 5 thousand years. However, it is not a fact that the bones from Del Mar are related to the sites of Texas Street and Buchanan Canyon and the tools found there. So the question of human activity in the Pleistocene in the San Diego area is still open.
Paradoxes from North America
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Another interesting discovery was made by Thomas Lee, who worked for many years as an assistant curator of the Indian Antiquities Department at the National Museum of Canada in Toronto. In the summer of 1951, he participated in an archaeological expedition to the province of Ontario. While exploring Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron, he found evidence of an ancient human settlement on its eastern outskirts, not far from the now-existing village of Sheganda. He began to conduct excavations at this place. Li managed to extract dozens of stone tools from the ground, which, apparently, were made by a people with a high level of technical development. Inspired by these findings, he continued to carefully excavate the settlement until 1955. The problem, however, was that the tools he found were much older than 10 thousand years.
Thomas Lee himself attributed them to the interglacial time. To make sure that his dating is correct, the scientist sought advice from a number of geologists. They found that the stone tools were at least 65 thousand years old, and perhaps much more - perhaps up to 125 thousand years. The excavation site was visited by forty to fifty or even a whole hundred geologists, and they were unanimous in their estimates. Four of the most venerable ones very carefully and diplomatically determined their age at least 30 thousand years. Nevertheless, archaeologists and anthropologists have knocked the facts under the prevailing theory, and now it is customary to date the Sheganda site to an age of 9500 years. On this occasion, Lee wrote bitterly: “My discoveries had to be ruined. They were ruined!"
Beginning in 1964 in the Mojave Desert, California, renowned scientist Louis Leakey excavated the Calico site. It is located near the shore of the now-disappeared Lake Manix, which existed in the Pleistocene era. As a result of excavations, which lasted 18 years, 11,400 eolith-like artifacts were recovered from various geological levels. The most ancient "eolithic" layer was 200 thousand years old. This was determined using the uranium isotope method.
Wrong trail
Support for the authenticity of the Calico tools came in 1982 from Brazil, when Maria Bertrand discovered a series of cave paintings in the state of Bahia. In 1985, excavations began in the Toca da Esperanza cave, and rough stone tools and the adjacent Pleistocene mammalian bones were found. Examination of the bones found by the radioisotope method showed that their age is about 200 thousand years. The age of the oldest bones even reached 295 thousand years.
Earlier, in the 1960s, finds made a lot of noise in Wayatlaco, 75 miles from Mexico City. Skilfully crafted stone tools were found there, rivaling the finest examples of Cro-Magnon culture in Europe. And a group of geologists who conducted surveys in the interests of the US Geological Survey, determined that the age of the finds is 250 thousand years. They used four methods for dating: 1) the uranium method; 2) determination of age based on the analysis of traces of nuclear decay; 3) tephra hydration method; 4) study of geological erosion. So everything was done extremely scrupulously.
I must say that back in 1912 - 1914. In Argentina, on the coast south of Buenos Aires, Florentino Ameghino, a serious world-renowned geologist, discovered roughly worked flint tools, incised and burnt bones, traces of ancient fires - all in undisturbed rock formations about 3.5 million years old. There he also found a cervical vertebra, which he himself considered to belong to one of the human ancestors, but the famous anthropologist Gorchichka identified it as human. Continuing the excavation, Carlos Ameghino, Florentino's brother, in addition to stone tools, discovered an extremely curious thing: the thigh bone of a toxodont (an extinct animal like a rhinoceros), in which the stone tip of a throwing weapon was firmly stuck.
In tune with the discoveries of the Amegino brothers, there is a discovery made just a couple of years ago in southern Mexico by Sylvia Gonzales and her colleagues at John Moore University of Liverpool. She managed to find a human footprint in the tuff. It was dated at 1.3 million years old. The situation was again scandalous. Neither a skillful person, nor an erect person, who fit well into this age, have never lived in America, according to the ideas of modern science. But this is not enough - the found footprint is most similar to the footprint of a modern person, whose age should not be calculated in millions of years! Not in Africa, not in Eurasia, not in America.
Colossi of the past
But even this does not exhaust the paradoxes associated with the time of human existence in America. After all, alternative researchers go even further in their judgments. The writer, president of the Society for the Study of the Secrets and Mysteries of the Earth, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Alexander Koltypin suggests that the megalithic structures in Cusco, Saxahuaman and Tiaguanaco, like similar colossi in other parts of the world, were built at least 5 - 7 million years ago, on the turn of the Miocene and Pliocene, and most likely even 17 million years ago - at the turn of the Early and Middle Miocene. In his reasoning, he proceeds from the fact that during the catastrophe that destroyed the civilization that created these structures, tectonic shifts of terrifying proportions took place. Suffice it to recall that Lake Titicaca, on which Tiaguanaco stands,has salty ocean water, that is, ascended to an altitude of 3812 meters above sea level as a result of tectonic shifts. The foreseeable history of mankind simply does not know of earthquakes of such strength, the nearest one, known to science as the Messinian one, occurred just 5 - 7 million years ago. It all sounds, of course, extremely fantastic, but who knows, who knows …
Victor BUMAGIN