Paleontologists have found processed mastodon bones and stone tools with which ancient hunters butchered a huge beast
LET'S GO HERE
By the time Christopher Columbus arrived in America (1492), the New World was inhabited by approximately 54 million people. But these people came from the Old World: their ancestors came to the continent from Siberia. This happened during the last ice age, when the Bering Isthmus still reliably connected Chukotka and Alaska. Until recently, scientists believed that before the appearance of the Siberians, North and South America were uninhabited territories. Indeed, archaeologists could not find there a single human site that would be older than 15 thousand years. According to the researchers, the settlers had been in "quarantine" in Alaska for about 7 thousand years and were able to settle throughout the New World only when the climate warmed and corridors began to form in the glaciers that covered the territory of modern Canada in a southern direction.
However, a recent study by American archaeologists led by Stephen Holen of the Center for Paleolithic Research of America had the effect of a bomb. "We found in Southern California, near San Diego, traces of the presence of a man who is 130 thousand years old!" - said the scientists in an article that was published on April 26 in the authoritative scientific journal Nature. This completely overturns all modern ideas about the settlement of America.
WHO MADE STELA FROM TIVN …
What have archaeologists found? They studied the bones of a young male American mastodon (these are extinct relatives of mammoths and modern elephants). Moreover, if all the bones lay horizontally (as it should be by nature), then one of the two tusks was dug in vertically and reached more ancient layers. "Who, besides a man, could have built this" stele "?" - archaeologists ask. But the main sensation was not a tusk dug into the ground at all. The bones of the animal had characteristic chips, which indicated that some ancient hunters butchered this huge animal.
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- Apparently, they (bones - author) were split to extract the bone marrow, - says Alexander Markov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, leading researcher at the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - It is important that both massive femurs were fractured, while the more fragile elements of the skeleton (ribs, vertebrae) remained intact. Judging by the nature of the chips, the bones were processed while still fresh, soon after the death of the mastodon.
The bones were divided into two "piles". Next to each of them there was one massive stone with a flat surface - they acted as an "anvil". Smaller cobblestones were used as a "hammer". There is no doubt that the stone tools were used to break bones, since the traceological examination showed that the marks on the hammer stones exactly correspond to the chips on the “anvil”. In addition, archaeologists conducted an "investigative experiment", during which, in various ways (see photo), massive bones of elephants and cows were broken. As a result, they received exactly the same marks on the stones and identical damage to the bones, which suggested that this is how the ancient hunters got to the treat.
Trasological studies of footprints on the very stones that served as anvil and hammer
… AND EATED MASTODONT?
The uranium-thorium method of dating bones determined that the mastodon ended his earthly journey 130 thousand years ago! However, at this time Cro-Magnons - the ancestors of modern people, including you and me, still lived in East Africa on the territory of modern Ethiopia. And only 100 thousand years ago they began to make the first forays into Europe, where the Neanderthals ruled at that time (this is a parallel branch of development, our paths diverged from them 500 thousand years ago). Neanderthals used stone weapons of labor and even invented a spear, so they could well "trim" the unfortunate mastodon in this way. But how could they get to America through the Bering Isthmus, if no one had ever found the remains of Neanderthals north of Altai? There was another type of extinct people who actively developed Asia - we are talking about the Denisov man,Whose DNA differs from the genome of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal. However, we know nothing about how the Denisovans migrated, since scientists have only five (!) Fragments of the bones of these people. Moreover, they were all found in the famous Denisovskaya cave in the Altai Territory.
Paleontologists have found processed mastodon bones and stone tools with which ancient hunters butchered a huge beast
“Nevertheless, our findings confirm the presence of an unidentified species of Homo Sapiens in America more than 100 thousand years ago,” says Professor Stephen Holen. “This is indicated by the fact that only people with their inherent dexterity and knowledge could use stone hammers and anvils to process mastodon bones for bone marrow extraction or tool making.
Nevertheless, the final point in this sensational study can only be made if the bones of the "heroes of the occasion" themselves are found in America - ancient people who so famously manipulated the relatives of modern elephants.
Yaroslav KOROBATOV