The beginning of an article in the American newspaper Saint-Paul Pioneer Press for February 17, 1998 read: "The first settlers in America appeared 40 thousand years ago, that is, three times earlier than previously thought." Professor George F. Carter of Johns Hopkins University discovered a camp of people dating back to this date on the coast of La Jolla, California. Carter even admits that man lived here even earlier - up to 80 thousand years ago.
The author of the aforementioned article in the "Saint Paul Pioneer Press" Robert S. Boyd sees four independent waves of settling of America from Asia. He substantiates this by referring to the data of linguists, archaeologists who have found an ancient site in Monte Verde in Chile, aged 33 thousand years, and to the results radiocarbon dating … human hair! Indeed, human hair is not subject to decay and contains carbon, which allows for a fairly accurate dating.
But the August-September 1998 Nexus (Chain of Events) magazine publishes an article by Dr. Virginia Steen-McIntyre, who specializes in volcanic sediment research, which reports something much more sensational. The author claims that the first people in America appeared at least … 250 thousand years ago!
This conclusion is based on archaeological finds and dating of volcanic deposits one hundred kilometers east of Mexico City (Mexico) and a few kilometers south of the city of Puebla. Here, in a high-mountain valley, there is the Balseikiyo reservoir, the shores of which have been the object of close attention of paleontologists for a hundred years. In the weathered badlands of this area, the remains of the Pleistocene (last ice age) fauna are constantly found, namely mammoths, mastodons, glyptodonts, horses, camels, wolves and saber-toothed tigers. In addition, 60 years ago, Mexican explorer Juan Armenta Camacho found here artifacts (objects of artificial origin) made of flint, quartz and animal bones. In 1935, on the banks of the Alsesek stream, which feeds the reservoir,he found the fossilized leg bone of an elephant-like creature with a silicon stake-tip thrust into it! Who hunted here since time immemorial?
Intrigued by this issue, Juan Camacho carried away further searches and could no longer give up this occupation for 30 years. His efforts and persistence were richly rewarded. Over three decades, Camacho has found more than a hundred scattered skeletons of mastodons, mammoths and smaller animals. Many of the remains bore traces of human actions. This means chips on the bones during the separation of meat, splitting of bones, their sharpening, rounding, etc., indicating an attempt to make some kind of tools from the bones. Among the finds was even the jaw of a mammoth with an arrowhead stuck into it.
Despite the fierce resistance of the scientific community, which categorically denies the possibility of such an ancient settlement of the American continent, all the same, there were researchers in Mexico and the USA who supported Juan Camacho. As a result of joint efforts in 1962, the necessary funds were allocated to continue the research.
The most active young woman anthropologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams from Harvard University got down to business. In their first exploration season, Cynthia and Juan Camacho surveyed four areas on the northern coast of the Balseikiyo reservoir. Here were found fossilized bone remains and primitive stone tools, and "in-situ", as scientists say, that is, together, in deep underground layers!
In one of the surveyed areas, a particularly large number of fossilized bones and primitive stone tools with traces of machining were concentrated. Moreover, stones with one-sided processing lay in ancient sediments, and with two-sided - in younger layers. They were buried under layers of volcanic ash and pumice.
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Both types of tools were arrowheads or spearheads used to butcher the carcasses of large animals such as mammoths and mastodons. This meant that the Proto-Americans were not content with butchering dead carcasses, but they hunted these monsters.
The scientific community demanded indisputable proof of such an ancient origin of the finds. The traditional radiocarbon dating method was not suitable here, because the remains were fossilized and did not contain carbon. All that was left was to rely on new methods capable of dating volcanic deposits, ash and pumice.
Such a method, also based on radioactive analysis and called the "uranium series method," was proposed by the geochemist of the United States Geological Survey Varney Szabo. Samples were sent to him for analysis - the molar of a mastodon, the pelvic bone of a camel and the shell of a snail. The results exceeded the wildest expectations: it turned out that the snail's shell is 22 thousand years old, the pelvic bone of a camel is 245 thousand years old (!) And the molar of a mastodon is 280 thousand years old (!). It should be emphasized that the dated samples had chips and other obvious traces of human impact.