Archeology find

[lostarrow]

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS—Fluted spear points no more than 12,400 years old have been unearthed at Serpentine Hot Springs in Alaska’s Bering Land Bridge National Preserve by a team of researchers associated with the Center for the Study of First Americans at Texas A&M University. This is the first time that fluted spear points from Alaska have been found in a datable context. It had been thought that fluting technology was carried by Paleoindians as they migrated southward, but the Alaska points are too young to be ancestral to the Clovis culture, thought to date to 13,000 years ago in North America. The new dates suggest that the models that describe the dispersal of early Americans and the transmission of their technologies will have to be revised. “Not all of Beringia’s early residents may have come from Siberia, as we have traditionally thought. Some may have come from America instead, although millennia after the initial migration across the land bridge from Asia. If the fluted points do not represent a human migration, they at least indicate the surprisingly early spread of an American technology into Arctic Alaska,” said team leader Ted Goebel.

 

[wildwills]

Very cool.

[JackCrafty]

There's evidence that clovis, and fluted point technology, originated in the Eastern US and spread from there.  That means that the technology was an Amerindian invention and wasn't carried along migration routes:  it was spread through trade or some other means.  Not everyone believes this, though.  There are still some experts out there that believe fluted point technology was dispersed by being "carried" along with moving populations.

I personally believe that technology was spread by word of mouth and/or trade.  I've said before that clovis was a meme but I get funny looks when I say that. 

Thanks for posting the photo!

[lostarrow]

Just saw it on a FB feed from the Archeology   site. Thought it might be of interest.

[mullet]

 Like Patrick said, there is Archeology evidence of Paleo points in Florida that pre-date Clovis points. If I remember right, they were found in Wekiva Springs in North Florida.

[stickbender]

     While digging a drain field for my Girlfriend, in Gainesville, Fl. I found lots of flakes, and such, and several pieces of chert, that looked identical to pictures of the ones with the "V" shaped notch.  They were not fluted, but they had the V shaped notch.  I don't have a clue as to what they were used for, except maybe scraping arrows, or something.  But they were not much longer than an inch, or so, some were maybe 3/4 of an inch.  I always get a kick out of seeing a written in stone archeological certainty being dismantled.  Like during the iron age, stone stopped being used.  Right.  Iron was hard to come by, and expensive.  So until it became more readily available, stone was used.  Like the cap lock muzzle loaders, when they came out in 1840's they were readily adopted, but were not an over night switch, flint locks were still being used up to and past the 1850's, because of economics, and and caps were not always available, and flint was fairly common,  plus it worked.  When cartridge guns came available, muzzle loaders were still being used, as late as the 1870's.  The cartridge guns were expensive, and ammunition was not always readily available.
Cool pictures, thanks for sharing.

                                                           Wayne