It looks like the 23k year old human footprints at White Sands are solid

It wasn't from Pacific islands, they're not close enough to America. The closest polynesian island is Easter Island and it's 2,000 miles away and was only reached 1,000 years ago.

The Polynesian migration got under way about 3000 years ago.

However humans have been using boats for longer. That's how Australia was settled about 40,000 years ago.

I am still cautious about this discovery. The number of archeological sites exploded starting 13,000 years ago, and it coincided with a major set of extinctions. That extinction might not be us, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi.... But human arrival in places like Australia is generally associated with major extinctions. So we should expect the same in North America.

Early human remains in America have to explain both why they did not leave more remains and why they did not come with a major mass extinction.

One possibility is that we were not the only hominids, and 13,000 years ago was not the only time that there was a land bridge across the Bering Strait. What we are is the only primates known to easily cooperate in groups bigger than Dunbar's Number (150 for us). That gives us an outsized impact.

If, for instance, the Denisovans had made it to the New World, they could leave convincingly human footprints while having a far lighter ecological impact than we would have.

This calls for a movie

> ”academic consensus”

This should probably be qualified as US academic consensus. Academics in Brazil have disputed the 13k yo date for America occupation for some time already.

The academic consensus, incorrect as it may be, is based on scientific evidence of human existence in the Americas. Is there similar evidence that academia has ignored but indigenous peoples are aware of? Or are you referring to oral tradition?

Well what is the Native American perspective on it?

Indigenous peoples of North America have a range of positions, not just one. All the way from saying maybe migration should be pushed back some X number of millennia before Clovis, to holding that the Creator created their tribes right where they are and it is offensive to claim they migrated from Asia.

I believe there was another recent study that found some pre-Clovis ancient DNA and concluded that modern Native Americans shared little in common, implying that pre-Clovis people were largely wiped out and thus are not ancestors of modern Native Americans.

Also not sure that the academic consensus has been that Clovis was the earliest settlement for maybe a decade.

And claimed what, instead? Stating they've "always been here", rode on a giant bird from "another world", or that they emerged from the Earth's navel just aren't things a scientist expects to find evidence for...

The article explains the carbon dating comes from seeds, pollen, and quartz from the sediment layer and not directly from the footprints themselves.

So it’s aliens? Get a hold of yourself man.

You realize there's a USAF base and missile range next door right?

Get a hold of yourself men.

It was simply noting an interesting parallel. No conclusions were made or mentioned.

How did you determine that? Could you link to a preprint or a publication where you make your argument?

Assuming that you’re serious, let me reply with two things.

First, fossilized impressions in sand and mud are always distorted. Look at more and you’ll see. These impressions are actually remarkably well-preserved.

Second, you can’t be sure that the second footprints are any more real. I could easily carve fake feet out of wood and make those impressions. So could the artist.

Epistemology is everywhere, eh?

Thankfully, you’ve prefaced your comment with an indication that your observation — based on a visual comparison of two photographs on the internet — is just your opinion.

Why bother going to the effort of applying the footnote notation for something so unashamedly un-academic?

A good rule of thumb for forming beliefs (and commenting on fora about studies) is if you don’t have more than a passing awareness of an entire academic field, and your observation relies on no unique knowledge, talent, or perspective that you bring to the table, then you can safely assume other people see it too and that there is more to it than what took you a few seconds to evaluate. Just something to consider?

I think that there are good reasons to distrust this sort of 'evidence'.

Firstly, I don't think dating (dendrochronoloy or luminescence (whatever that is)) is valid. It is unverifiable guess work.

Secondly, how does one date something intangible like a footprint? Oh the grass and pollen.... please. I don't think you can date a secondary trace of something like this. Its like a detective using dust to see the oil on a criminal's finger print. Nice idea, but highly unlikely to be practical.

> "People can argue against any single dating technique," he said. "But it's the totality of the study, the congruence of the ages from all three different dating techniques, that really make our results exceptionally robust."

"exceptionally robust"... if you say so.

> Jolie, who is of Oglala Lakota and Hodulgee Muscogee heritage, says technology is transforming his field. But there's something else, too: more Indigenous people are involved in research into these early Americans.

Ok - so there is a modern angle too. Amazing how history cross-references as it does and with such good timing. Well, not that amazing ... if you think that the history we are presented is simply the history for today (not yesteryear or tomorrow's history). We get the message for our timeline as we need it. The underlying message that this history supports is: its time 'we' gave the history and land back to the people 'we' stole it from, brothers and sisters. Except, that no one alive now committed the crimes that they are being accused of - so we are going to commit new crimes on account of stories that manufacture consent to the crimes..