These are the oldest stone tools ever found in the United States | Hacker News Reader

These are the oldest stone tools ever found in the United States

arstechnica.com

33 pointsmkl14 comments

A group of hunters and anthropologists recently butchered a bison using only these kinds of tools https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmsrkFjPiKM

The youtube channel hunt primitive also did this including "hunting" the bison using atlatl and and clovis point spears. It was very interesting and probably useful to people studying ancient people's but it's pretty brutal and not a quick death so definitely not for the faint of heart.

See also Donny Dust's channel where they did a similar process. But he comes at it from the perspective of someone who knaps tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS7m6P1__HI

A decade ago, archaeologists would have been completely flabbergasted to find evidence that people were living in North America 18,000 years ago. At that point, the oldest evidence of people anywhere on the continent dated to around 13,000 years ago, in the form of long projectile points with flutes: narrow notches at their bases, creating a shallow groove to fit a wooden shaft for hafting.

This is not true. A decade ago, it is true that the "clovis clique" was in full bloom, stomping all over the research and sometimes whole careers of anybody who cast doubt on the "clovis first" narrative.

FWIW, I took a cultural anthropology course in 2003 from a local community college in the Bay Area. We were taught the "Clovis First" theory was on its way out and I remember "20,000 years ago" being the newer thinking.

As always, science advances one funeral at a time

I like the dark part of histories (in this case the history of historical research). For me, the hope I get from how we survived bad behavior is more enriching than any quasi-fictional hero narrative.

20 years ago would be accurate.

My understanding is that pre-Clovis evidence really starts mounting in the early 90's, and by 2000 or so, there's not really any Clovis-First proponents among the archaeologists doing the work, although other people do take longer to get the message.

20 years from now would be accurate too. The future is not evenly distributed and the past isn't even past.

Surprised to find no mention of an asteroid/comet impact[1] ~12kya that would have destroyed almost all evidence of prior human habitation.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2019-03-geologic-evidence-theory-major...

That article says nothing about an impact destroying evidence of habitation. That seems impossible to me; dust and fire couldn't destroy stone tools, especially ones that are under surface dirt already.

>Surprised to find no mention of a theoretical asteroid/comet impact...

Fixed that for ya (based on the title of your link). Given that the article in question here suggests people were in Oregon ~18,000 years ago, that's about a ~5200 year gap for what was found here to have been buried enough to, one would imagine, withstand what occurred in your link.

Also, the impact was thousands of miles away, and we're talking about stone tools. They would have mostly been fine on the surface, too.

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