Archeology: Mammoth engravings in Florida

[Andre]

This can be related to a lot of specialities, but I guess the archeologic element is the most interesting.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/scientists_reveal_a_first_in_ice_age_art

..."This is an incredibly exciting discovery," said Dennis Stanford, anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and co-author of this research. "There are hundreds of depictions of proboscideans on cave walls and carved into bones in Europe, but none from America—until now."...

[PLAIN]http://www.sciencecodex.com/aggregated-images/tech/a3J23Y0dvTq78qk6.jpg[/quote]

I asked my paleontologic friend if he could determine the bone and I wonder if the 13,000 years is a carbon date or a calibrated age. If a 14C date, it would calibrate to ~15,400 calendar years (INTCAL09), putting more and more question marks to the Clovis first hypothesis.

 

[NileQueen]

I asked my paleontologic friend if he could determine the bone and I wonder if the 13,000 years is a carbon date or a calibrated age. If a 14C date, it would calibrate to ~15,400 calendar years (INTCAL09), putting more and more question marks to the Clovis first hypothesis.

It is neither. It is an estimated age derived from the much earlier investigation at Vero Beach, and they do not expect they can date this bone because of its heavy mineralization.

 

[Andre]

Interesting. For comparison the youngest mammoth bones and remains from the North Sea which date before the last glacial maximum, i.c. around 30,000 years, are not mineralized (Fauna association III). No doubt that the mineralization process in Florida is different but 13ky seems a bit short still.

Also an interesting study about the skills of the artists

 

[Andre]

Nilequeen was kind enough to share some information directly from the publication, Purdy et al, 2011; Earliest Art in the Americas: Incised Image of a Proboscidean on a Mineralized Extinct Animal Bone from Vero Beach Journal of Archaeological Science, 2 June 2011

The main scope was a thorough hi tech forensic research to verify its authenticity, which it passed on all counts.

About the age of 13 ky:

...The incising would have to be at least 13,000 years old as this is the date for the last appearance of these animals in eastern North America (Faith and Surovell 2009; Grayson and Meltzer 2003; Steadman et al. 2005), and more recent Precolumbian people would not have seen a mammoth or mastodon to draw.

There you go. no new information and no challenging of anything. On the contrary, unless the mentioned references falsify it, there is some evidence that the http://eolspecies.lifedesks.org/pages/19700. So theoretically it could be (much) younger. But the mineralization of the bone would oppose that.

Anyway,

...Additionally, the development of a method to date mineralized bone is needed and, if successful, would furnish a valuable means to solve persisting problems about America’s ancient inhabitants...

Absolutely.

 

[LudusRex]

I find this discovery of mammoth engravings in Florida to be highly significant. It adds to our understanding of prehistoric art and the cultural practices of early humans in North America. The fact that these engravings were found in Florida, rather than Europe where similar depictions have been discovered, suggests a more widespread distribution of this type of art among early humans. This finding also raises questions about the traditional Clovis first hypothesis, which posits that the first humans to arrive in the Americas were the Clovis people approximately 13,000 years ago. The potential for this discovery to challenge and expand our current understanding of human migration and cultural development in the Americas is truly exciting. I am eager to see further research and analysis on this site and its implications for our understanding of prehistoric human societies.