Wikipedia first line:
> The Serpent Mound is believed to have been built by the Native American Adena peoples around 320 BCE, and then either added to or repaired by the Fort Ancient peoples around 1100 CE.
So maybe 2k years?
> The Serpent Mound is believed to have been built by the Native American Adena peoples around 320 BCE, and then either added to or repaired by the Fort Ancient peoples around 1100 CE.
So maybe 2k years?
Much older.
T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶v̶a̶r̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶p̶u̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶i̶t̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶t̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶W̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶S̶a̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶e̶s̶t̶a̶b̶l̶i̶s̶h̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶w̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶2̶1̶k̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶2̶3̶k̶.̶ (This is less settled than I'd thought.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_fossil_footprints
T̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶v̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶u̶n̶c̶o̶n̶t̶r̶o̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶w̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶1̶2̶.̶8̶k̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶1̶3̶.̶5̶k̶.̶ (This hasn't been a lower bound for a while, see below.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_point
It's my understanding this is an active area of debate. To give a tentative upper bound, the Cerutti mastodon kill - who's anthropogenic origins, while they seem compelling to me (a nonexpert), are hotly debated, have a date of 130k years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site
(I suspect GP meant to reference the Cerutti Mastodon site, rather than Serpent Mound?)
(And of course, much of this is referenced in the article, I'm busted for reading the comments first! Interesting article that says it far better than I, worth reading.)
Another possibility is that this was another group of hominids, not homo sapiens, and that they did in fact die out.
But honestly I'm not qualified to say much more in the subject than I have, I think it's a fascinating hypothesis & that the evidence that the bones were broken apart by being impacted with stones, in a similar manner to how bones are broken up to extract marrow, is compelling. And that the further isotopic evidence suggesting it was the stones found around the site, rather than construction equipment, is also compelling. But I'm not an archaeologist, and when the debate settles, I'll accept the conclusion they come to.
[1] Not to be pedantic, just to note because I find it fascinating, but the current ice age hasn't ended, this was the "last glacial period". Between ice ages there can be things like palm trees and turtles living at the poles. We're currently in an interglacial period of an ongoing ice age.
The ice stopped well short of the southern border of california: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Iceage_n...
Furthermore the LGM event started around 33000 BCE, reached its peak around 25000 BCE, and the deglaciation started around 19000 BCE with a significant acceleration around 15000 BCE.
All of lowland Mexico and central America were ice-free throughout.
People mostly don't try to live on mountaintops, icy or not.
The Cerutti Mastodon site is not compelling to me, because a date of 130kya would put it before any other site of homo sapiens outside of Africa. Being so far out of line with other evidence means that the evidence in favor of hominids needs to be exceptionally rock solid, which it isn't.
I would submit we should be cautious with metaobservations like, "this is much older than other sites," because we should be trying to prove ourselves wrong, whereas these sorts of metaobservations amplify confirmation bias. I'm not saying skepticism is unwarranted, just that we need to be careful with this sort of reasoning.
As a side note, I've seen people strike through stuff out on HN, and I'd like to strike through this claim to emphasize there's a correction; it's not in the undocumented features repo[1], and I've tried a few standard things like ~this~ and ~~this~~ and -this- and --this-- and have never figured it out. Can anyone tell me what the markdown is?
Beautiful, thank you.
Both 'we should be trying to prove ourselves wrong' and 'Being so far out of line with other evidence means that the evidence in favor of hominids needs to be exceptionally rock solid' can both be valid at the same time. The base rate of a 'false positive' for extraordinary claims that conflict with an existing body of evidence is typically much higher so confidence in the evidence would need to quite strong for that piece of evidence to move the consensus.
I'd consider myself largely a frequentist but the relevant xkcd [1] comes to mind
I'd argue that ignoring that aspect can amplify one's susceptiblity to confirmation bias if one is predisposed to believing in a very early American hominid story for whatever reason.
[1] https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/frequentists_vs_bayesians_2x.pn...
Although Fuyan also shows H.Sapiens may (its datation is also disputed) also have reached out of africa much earlier than otherwise supported.
The problem is clearly in preconceptions about H. migration, and beliefs about the capabilities of our ancestors long ago.
People constructed boats and settled Crete 200,000 years ago. Like it or not. Were they H. sap., in Europe already? Maybe!