Over the past year or so, the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) has gained a great deal of public visibility, first through Graham Hancock’s Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse, and just last week, through a profile by Zach St. George in the New York Times Magazine. The idea is that the cold snap, or rapid cooling,…
It looks like the 23ky old human footprints at White Sands are solid
Two years ago, Bennet et al. (2021) made a lot of headlines with a claim of (quite amazing) 23 000 year old human footprints on the margin of paleolake Otero, at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. If this was true, it would be the oldest securely dated archaeological site in the Americas by…
Evaluating the claim of 27ky old human-modified giant sloth bones from Santa Elina in central Brazil
Pansani et al. (2023) recently published an interesting update on some giant ground sloth osteoderms possibly modified by humans about 27ky ago at the Santa Elina site in central Brazil. If these osteoderms really were perforated and used as pendants by humans at Santa Elina twenty seven thousand years ago, it would make them the…
Rimrock Draw Rockshelter: Do we now have a solid 18ky old archaeological site in the Americas?
In my view, the oldest securely dated archaeological material in the Americas so far is about fifteen thousand years old, which places it squarely after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). But while some of the poorly supported claims coming out of the Cave of Bones have been monopolizing media attention and getting a Netflix special,…
The Capuchins of Pedra Furada: Did non-human primates create the oldest known stone tool assemblages in Brazil?
For several decades now, Brazilian sites like Pedra Furada have claimed archaeological material dating back as far as 30ky ago. That would be about double the age of the oldest securely dated archaeological material in the Americas. I’ve commented on these sites before. My opinion so far is that the assemblages could very well have…