sculptor
Valued Senior Member
sculptor said: ↑
Long ago, I got into an argument with a "clovis first" professor who really had not kept up with the science.
He said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!"
I said: "Except when they are yours."
[Citation required.] Most of the evidence for older human habitation in the Americas than the Clovis culture appears to have appeared in the 21st century. So your claim that you bested this professor "long ago" does not show that 1) you made a credible claim backed by credible research, and 2) said research was available "long ago." Am I just old? I thought "long ago" still means prior to 2001-09-11.
This was late '70s, circa '78-'80. By then, we had Adovasio and associates publishing about Meadowcroft(a pre-clovis site), and references to Bird's work in south america. There were just a few sites that didn't fit the paradigm back then.
Also the math just didn't add up for such rapid dispersal on foot. Would you hazard a guess as to just how many miles a hunter-gatherer group would migrate in a generation? I would suppose the pattern to be @ find a suitable location, exploit the flora and fauna found therein, raise a bunch of babies, increase the population. It would then be those babies who would splinter off and migrate further, and repeat the process. I would think it generous to concede a 20 mile migration per generation. And most certainly not the 8000 miles from Alaska to monte verde in anything less than 4000 years.-------------the math just doesn't add up.
You should be asking yourself, did the "Clovis first" theory withstand the test of time.
Anyway, we had our tete a tet(I rarely challenged professors in public). So, I went back to the stacks(what were then called the large books with current abstracts of articles and dissertations) and re-found the abstracts which I had just read in passing, got the reference librarian to order the articles and dissertations, then wrote a paper supporting my contentions--------(A+). I had an advantage. I was just a student scholar, with no responsibilities other than scholarship, While the professor had to do lesson plans, teach, grade homework and tests, serve on committees, etc.........etc..
Read above:
Have I made any claims concerning the thread starter other than :"I found this today:" ?
All of my claims were within my field of expertise, and only within my field of expertise.
Take it for what it is, and not for what it is not.