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June 25th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
by David Deming
Recently
by David Deming: What
If Atlas Shrugged?
It has been
called “the most fundamental change in human behavior” that ever
occurred. About 50,000 years ago, human beings began to produce
art and develop innovative new technologies that allowed them to
master their environment as never before. Population increased and
Homo sapiens
spread rapidly around the globe displacing cousins such as Neanderthals.
A significant evolutionary advance in human neurological capacity
must have occurred. Yet the appearance of culturally modern humans
is an event without an apparent cause.
Where did modern
humans originate? The answer may be hidden underneath a cow pasture
in Oklahoma. Abandoned for more than eighty years, what could be
one of the most important archeological sites on earth lies neglected
and forgotten.
In the 1920s
A. H. Holloman operated a commercial gravel pit near the small town
of Frederick, Oklahoma. Holloman began to find both animal fossils
and human artifacts interspersed among the gravels. A friend of
Holloman’s wrote to the editor of Scientific American concerning
the finds. Subsequent visits by paleontologist Harold Cook and museum
director J. D. Figgins resulted in publications
describing both fossils and human artifacts from the Holloman Pit.
Almost immediately,
the Holloman site became the subject of controversy. Fossils associated
with the artifacts appeared to be from the Pleistocene
epoch, about 150,000 years before present. Found among the Pleistocene
fauna were arrowheads that anthropologist Leslie
Spier described as “resembling modern Indian forms.” Even in
the 1920s, this was regarded as impossible. The archeological consensus
was that humans had evolved in the Old World and only entered the
Americas during the Holocene
epoch starting about 10,000 years ago.
Every possible
objection was raised as to why the artifacts from Holloman could
not be of Pleistocene age. Without bothering to visit the Holloman
site, Leslie Spier argued that the arrowheads must have fallen into
the pit from the surface. Another critic speculated that the gravel
deposits represented a recent reworking and mixing of Pleistocene
fossils with Holocene artifacts.
All objections
were met and defeated. In 1929 Mr. Holloman located an arrowhead
cemented in place. A team of geologists from the University of Oklahoma
led by Charles
Gould visited the Holloman site and satisfied themselves as
to the in situ nature of the artifact. Even critic Leslie Spier
conceded that the human artifacts were of the same age as the fossil
animals.
Yet the controversy
continued. Tired of the contentious quarrelling, in 1932 Mr. Holloman
closed the site. A 1955 retrospective published by the Oklahoma
Geological Survey concluded “it is a scientific tragedy that the
disagreement among observers and scientists caused all to cease
collecting and observing the pit.” Despite its apparent promise,
the Holloman site was never systematically excavated.
By 1965 North
American archeologists had acceded to moving the date of first human
occupation in America back to the late Pleistocene. Dating of a
site near Clovis, New Mexico suggested that humans first entered
the Western Hemisphere about 11,500 bp when an ice-free corridor
opened up that would have allowed entry into the continental interior.
The Clovis-first
theory seemed to have extraordinary explanatory power and it
remained the ruling theory for more than thirty years.
For US archeologists,
Clovis-first became dogmatic truth. No one looked for an older human
presence in the Americas because everyone knew that the Clovis culture
was first. When archeological excavations reached the Clovis level,
digging stopped. But Central and South American archeologists were
unencumbered by preconceived notions. Not knowing that pre-Clovis
occupation was impossible they went out and discovered it. Excavations
in Brazil and Mexico uncovered evidence of a human presence in the
Americas as early as 295,000 bp.
In 1997 US
archeologists were finally forced to abandon their beloved Clovis-first
theory. Excavations at Monte
Verde, Chile, by Tom Dillehay and his colleagues definitively
documented a human presence in South America during pre-Clovis times.
Yet the accepted date of first entry into the Americas was barely
nudged back from 11,500 bp to 15,000 bp.
Archeologists
have yet to come to terms with the reams of evidence documenting
a human presence in the Americas as early as 300,000 bp. It is likely
that humans evolved initially in Africa. But they didn’t remain
there very long. Homo is a highly mobile species. Hominids
were in the Republic of Georgia by 1,800,000 bp and people occupied
cold climates in northern Europe as early as 780,000 bp.
The Bering
Land Bridge between Asia and Alaska was open for about 200,000
of the last 500,000 years. Yet we are supposed to believe that Homo
sapiens only entered the Americas 15,000 years ago, even though
Homo erectus
was in east Asia as early as 1,500,000 bp. It is more likely that
hominids moved back and forth over the Bering Land Bridge repeatedly.
The currently
fashionable theory is that the modern humans evolved in Africa
about 50,000 bp and then migrated throughout the world, displacing
other forms of Homo such as Neanderthals. Yet there are numerous
difficulties with this theory and little evidence in support.
The most significant
problem with the Out-of-Africa
theory is that evolution requires geographic isolation of a small
population. Yet people living in Africa shared a common stone technology
with hominids in Eurasia and surely would have interbred with them.
Any evolutionary change would have been muted by gene flow.
Another problem
with Out-of-Africa is that it implies that a species which evolved
in tropical Africa rapidly displaced cold-adapted Neanderthals in
northern Europe during the coldest part of the last Ice Age. Acceptance
of Out-of-Africa also requires us to accept the bizarre corollary
that modern humans managed to cross the ocean to Australia as early
as 60,000 bp, yet failed to walk into Europe until 43,000 bp.
It is more
likely that culturally modern humans originated in the Americas.
This theory was first proposed by Jeff
Goodman in 1981. Only in America do we find evidence of advanced
stone technology at early times. Holloman is not the only site in
the Western Hemisphere at which human artifacts of great age have
been found. At the Hueyatlaco
site in Mexico, Virginia Steen-McIntyre and her colleagues have
found advanced stone technologies dating to 250,000 bp.
It is possible
that the opening and closing of the Bering Land Bridge has functioned
as the pacemaker of human evolution over the last several hundred
thousand years. Archaic Homo sapiens from Africa could have walked
into America from about 189,000 to 130,000 bp. The critical period
for evolutionary change was the last
interglacial. From about 130,000 to 75,000 bp the land bridge
was closed. Isolated from the rest of humanity, a relatively small
population of people in the Americas could have evolved the intellectual
capabilities of modern humans. When the land bridge opened again
at 75,000 bp, there likely were one or more migrations back into
Asia, with humans moving down the coast of Asia into Australia,
eventually reaching both Africa and Europe.
The key to
understanding where modern humans originated may lie in an obscure
location in rural Oklahoma. The Holloman Pit is only a small part
of a broad ridge of Pleistocene gravels 800 meters wide that extends
linearly more than 12 kilometers. This area has never been excavated,
yet it has a vast potential for discovery. If we do not look we
shall not find.
June
25, 2013
David
Deming [send him mail] is
a geologist, professor of arts and sciences at the University of
Oklahoma, , and the author of “Did Modern Humans Originate in the
Americas? a Retrospective on the Holloman Gravel Pit in Oklahoma,”
published in the current issue of the Journal of Scientific
Exploration. He is the author of the series Science
and Technology in World History.
Copyright
© 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
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