Question about those bone tools found in Oregon last year

I keep hearing everyone call them evidence of the first Americans, but I think we are jumping the gun. The dating they used from the Cooper's Ferry site showed a 3,000 year gap in occupation, which makes me wonder if they are just later tools that sank into older dirt. Has anyone else looked at the stratigraphy reports themselves?

2 comments

2 Comments

emmasmith4d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah the Cooper's Ferry stratigraphy is actually a mess if you dig into it. I remember reading the original 2019 paper where they described the lowest layers as "heavily bioturbated" which is just a fancy way of saying gophers and tree roots mixed everything up. My cousin worked on a dig in Idaho back in 2017 and he said the soil there is super sandy and loose, stuff sinks all the time. A 3000 year gap is huge, that's not a continuous occupation thats a pause. The tools could be from the later layer and just fell down a crack or something. I trust the direct radiocarbon on the tools themselves more than the layer dating, but even that has issues if the tools were handled or coated in something. I wish they would just publish the full soil analysis instead of just the highlights.

faithf774d ago

Holy crap @emmasmith, you're telling me gophers might be responsible for rewriting human migration timelines? I guess the squirrels really are winning the archaeology wars.