Older Americans?

[Maedhros]

From CNN:

Scientists: Americans older than thought
Footprint discovery suggests humans were on continent 40,000 years ago

LONDON, England (AP) -- British scientists claimed on Tuesday to have unearthed 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, challenging previous studies that put the arrival of the first humans in the Americas at about 13,500 years ago.

Scientists Silvia Gonzalez, from Liverpool John Moores University, and Matthew Bennett, of Bournemouth University, found the footprints in an abandoned quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano in the Valsequillo Basin, near Puebla, south of Mexico City in 2003.

Gonzalez said the footprints were preserved as trace fossils in volcanic ash along what was the shoreline of an ancient volcanic lake.

Wow. I would have never guessed that the first americans were that old.

[Spock]

Yep, an Eastern European humanoid stole a boat from the UK, landed in the US, then met another who had stolen a car and they drove to his house in Mexico
..how's that for stereotype.....all funning

[Bombadillo]

Somehow I understood that as "Americans older than the process of thought."

I think there was also another idea that humans may have been here 30,000 years ago already, although it wasn't as widely accepted as the 13,500-year-ago theory. So right now some nerd is cheering "I told you so!"

[Insidious Rex]

What about the Topper site in South Carolina that they found a few years back? It had remains dating back to over 50,000 years ago.

[Spock]

REMAINS yes, but no footprints, they don't know if humans left the stuff, lol , prejudicial archeologists.

[Insidious Rex]

I dont know sounds like they were pretty sure it was humans to me. Archaeologists put humans in North America 50,000 years ago Aliens perhaps?

But I think both these discoveries make it more clear that there was a pre-ice age expansion into the americas and that it gets muddled because there was also a much more prominent post-ice age expansion and most likely these individuals mixed and interbred resulting in the proto-indians that lead to the more familiar south american and north american indian cultures as we know them from archaeology.

[Spock]

[QUOTE=Insidious Rex]I dont know sounds like they were pretty sure it was humans to me.

OK, so an ancestor went out for a burger and left his footprint.

[Bombadillo]

I was stuck with the same skepticism at first, Spock, but I think I'll trust the professional footprint decipherers. After all, it doesn't seem so unlikely to me, considering the suggestions of humans here 50,000 years ago. And the list of stuff we've learned from archeological digs so far (including the theory, for some reason accepted as firm fact, that we were here 13,500 years ago) is just waiting to be added onto with new information from new digs. So to be extremely skeptical about new information in such a speculative science is kind of a setback to the science itself, in my point of view. THeir next step should be to investigate how the 'human' could have gotten there from the currently accepted point of human origin in Africa, before immediately getting all worked up over how unlikely it is according to the current theories, that are waiting to be proven wrong.

Not that anyone here is getting worked up, of course. I'm more or less venting my frustration with the modern world of science.

[Spock]

...oh

[Tessar]

Clearly the footprint of Adam carrying home all of Eve's purchases from the Payless Shoe Store. Otherwise he wouldn't have been heavy enough to leave a footprint.

[Spock]

lmaorotf