The Clovis Police: There is Considerable Danger to Thinking that Radiometric Dates can be Understood in Isolation / Chronologies are Inherently Sociological Phenomena Rooted in the History of Culture / The Theory that the Peopling of the Americas Began with the Clovis - 12,000 Years Ago - is a Case in Point / Numerous Careers have been Destroyed for the 'Heresy' of Publishing Pre-Clovis Artifacts / A Number of Archaeologists have Admitted to Re-burying or Skipping Over Such Finds to Save their Careers
Note: Although Ginenthal's purpose in telling the story of Ales Hrdlicka and the Clovis Police is to cast doubt upon the overkill hypothesis, my motive here is different. To be clear, I do not defend the validity of any of the proposed dates which follow, and this 1997 text may not be reflective of the current dominant theory for the peopling of the Americas.
My purpose here is to instead emphasize a more fundamental lesson -- the way in which the chronology itself is constructed through sociological forces. The dates subsequently published are selected as right or wrong in accordance with whether or not they provide validation to these historical sociological forces. The fact of the matter is that we cannot understand the chronology or the dates in full without a look at the sociology of the domains where they are employed.
The quote in the small circled icon comes from here ...
http://www.slideshare.net/historyteacher38668/his-2213-who-were-the-first-americans-when-did-they-arrive-here-8938083
The following excerpt comes from ...
http://immanuelvelikovsky.com/Mammoth.pdf
(see original for references until I add them here)
The Extinction of the Mammoth
by Charles Ginenthal
The Velikovskian: A Journal of Myth, History and Science
Quota pars operis tanti nobis committitur?
Vol III, Nos. 2 and 3
A selection from Chapter 2: The Age of Man in America
"Charles Lyell, upon his realization that there had been a recent extinction of the giant animals suggested that the extermination via hunting by man 'is the first idea presented to the mind of almost every naturalist.' [33] Eleven years later, Richard Owen claimed that in the Americas, the extinction could have come about through the 'appearance of mankind on a limited tract of land not before inhabited.' [34]
[...]
The history of the time in which the mammoth lived, as related to man, has a colorful and interesting history which will be disclosed below. The point I wish to emphasize is that once a powerful and illustrious scientist makes a statement, it often becomes dogma for generations to follow and acts to seriously impede any progress toward solution based on any new evidence. The following discussion is, therefore, germane not only as science, but as history about the time in which the mammoths lived in the arctic.
One, therefore, ought to know fairly precisely the dating of man's arrival in the Americas and the correct date for the extinction; the extinction should be closely timed to the arrival of human hunters. Donald K. Grayson, however, shows, 'The timing of Ice Age extinctions is really very poorly understood ... Radio carbon chronologies are bad in North America and worse in Europe.' [44] However, if it could be firmly established that man lived in the Americas for longer than 10,000 to 12,000 years, the synchrony of hunters arriving in America, and the onset and, soon thereafter, extinction or overkill thesis, would fail. The overkill hypothesis is based, in large measure, on this synchrony which has become archeological dogma over the past 50 years, namely that man has not been in North America prior to about 12,000 years B.P., when he crossed the land bridge at the Bering Strait and then began this slaughter.
'The quest for the origin of the Americans has been going on ever since Columbus ... Although the Bible doesn't mention them [the Indians], the Pope in 1512 officially declared them to be descendants of Adam and Eve. New England Protestant cleric Cotton Mather disagreed; he believed they were brought here by the devil. Others linked them with the 'lost ten tribes' of Israel, with ancient Greeks, Trojans, Egyptians, Norwegians, and the inhabitants of the mythical continents of Atlantis and Mu.' [45]
But the 12,000 year date was not conceived of until early in the 20th century. According to Roger Lewin,
''The origins of American Indians is a topic that has occupied the minds of western scholars for nearly 500 years,' explains Richard Morland of the Canadian Museum in Ottawa. In the late eighteenth century, for instance, Thomas Jefferson became convinced on the basis of archaeological and linguistic evidence that America Indians shared a common origin with northern Asiatics. And the diversity of America Indian languages persuaded him that they had a very long history. Through Darwin's time, scholars even suggested that American Indian history went back perhaps as far as 100,000 years. This notion was squashed at the turn of the century by American anthropologists W. H. Holmes and Ales Hrdlicka.' [46]
The first hurdle to overcome was the opposition of Ales Hrdlicka, like Cuvier, he said man had not been in America with the mammoth.
'The main authority on these topics ... was the Czech-born anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka, who in 1903 became the Smithsonian Institution's first curator of physical anthropology. Hrdlicka, a brilliant scientist and a devastating debater, systematically examined and confidently dismissed all evidence offered to show man's antiquity in the New World. He brushed aside ... discoveries [of human relics found with mammoths or other ancient extinct creatures] by saying that the human relics had accidentally became mixed with those of extinct animals ...
'As he grew older his opinions hardened into prejudices, which he proclaimed so vehemently that most scientists thought it would be improper to hold an opposing belief. No one wanted to contradict fiery old Hrdlicka, for when anyone dared to suggest that men had lived in the United States in the time of big extinct mammals, Hrdlicka immediately loosed a barrage of denunciation.' [47]
The point I wish to stress is that when a powerful figure like Hrdlicka intimidates professionals in less powerful and less secure positions, then good science cannot be done. And I stress that this is one of the basic problems endemic to modern science. As Robert Silverberg shows, as Hrdlicka,
'grew older his opinions hardened into prejudices, and he proclaimed his ideas so vehemently and with such a show of authority that it became professionally dangerous for any scientist to try to contradict them. Only a brave archeologist or a foolish one would dare to tangle with Hrdlicka. One archeologist of the 1920's warned his pupils, not entirely jokingly, 'if you ever find evidence of human life in [America] in a context which is ancient, bury it carefully, but don't forget about it'.' [48]
A marvelous story about Hrdlicka is told by paleontologist, Louis Leakey:
'Back in 1929-1930 when I was teaching students at the University of Cambridge ... I began to tell my students that man must have been in the New World [for] at least 15,000 years. I shall never forget when Ales Hrdlicka, that great man from the Smithsonian Institution, happened to be at Cambridge, and he was told by my professor (I was only a student supervisor) that Dr. Leakey was telling students that man must have been in America 15,000 or more years ago. He burst into my rooms -- he didn't even wait to shake hands,
'Hrdlicka said, 'Leakey, what's this I hear? Are you preaching heresy?'
''No, Sir!' said Leakey.
'Hrdlicka replied, 'You are! You are telling students that man was in America 15,000 years ago. What evidence have you?'
'Leakey answered, 'No positive evidence. Purely circumstantial evidence. But with man from Alaska to Cape Horn, with many different languages and at least two civilizations, it is not possible that he was present only the few thousand years that you at present allow.'' [49]
Leakey was lucky that he survived this encounter. Others were not so lucky. Just imagine the arrogance of Hrdlicka breaking into someone's rooms without first knocking at the door, the lack of control in this case exhibits disturbed behavior.
For any reader who believes I am being unduly severe on Hrdlicka, painting him as a raving neurotic. I add this item by C. W. Ceram:
'He [Hrdlicka] was an odd bird in other respects also. For example, he made it a rule that all his associates had to will their skulls to science, but in his own last will he stipulated that he was to be cremated, his ashes mingled with those of his first wife and deposited in an urn in the Smithsonian Institution.' [50]
Hrdlicka had no qualms about destroying anyone that he felt endangered his views of the peopling of the New World. According to Lewin, G. Edward Lewis, a doctoral candidate at Yale University on an expedition to the Siwalik Hills of India, found fossils of a possible hominid which he dubbed Ramapithecus, or 'Rama's age.' Hrdlicka,
'... chose to damn Ramapithecus in the pages of the American Journal of Science ... where Lewis had published his claims for the fossil. In six short pages Hrdlicka tore into Lewis' work, accusing the young man of committing 'a series of errors' and reaching an 'utterly unjustifiable' conclusion. Ramapithecus, he said, was just an ape [and not a hominid] ...
'Hrdlicka, he [Lewis] says, 'thought he was the anointed and elect prophet who had been foreordained and chosen to make such discoveries and demolish the work of anyone else.' Hrdlicka's paper was somewhat self-contradictory, and says [Elwyn] Simons, [of Yale] 'scattered with blunders and naivetes.' 'The man didn't know what he was talking about,' recalls Lewis. 'So I could not take the paper's content seriously, but did take seriously the possibility of his damaging my reputation.'
'As an attempt to salvage his reputation Lewis penned 'an unhurried and temperate reply.' The rebuttal never found the printed page, however, because the editor of the American Journal of Science, Lewis' own supervisor, [Richard Swann] Lull, declined to accept it. 'They refused to publish it,' says Lewis, 'although they admitted that I had written nothing offensive, because they said Hrdlicka was an important man, and I was a young man whose reputation would be damaged ... inasmuch as the baldly stated facts and courteous comments would make him look like a fool!' Lewis' thesis which is described by [David] Pilbeam [a British anthropologist] as 'a very good piece of work' and by Simons as 'the best opinion people could reach at the time' -- was never published ...
'Hrdlicka had good reason to want to discredit Lewis' work, says Frank Spencer, a scholar of this period of the history of paleontology and of Hrdlicka in particular. 'It has nothing to do with the shape of the jaw,' he suggests. 'It had to do with where the jaw came from -- namely, the fringes of Central Asia.' In Hrdlicka's view, the western part of the Old World was the wellspring of human origins. Everything in his scheme depended upon this, including his ideas on the eventual peopling of the New World. To have the first hominids appearing in the eastern part of the Old World [so they would arrive in the New World prior to 12,000 B.P.] was therefore simply unacceptable. 'So he did a hatchet job on Lewis' work,' says Spencer.' [51]
Ceram describes Hrdlicka's behavior thus:
'Ales Hrdlicka of the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, blocked all research into the past for a whole generation ...
'He was ruthless in enforcing his dominance upon younger men ...
'Even in 1928, by which time the importance of the Folsom find was clear to everyone, Hrdlicka had the temerity to decree at a meeting of the New York Academy that there could not have been a Paleo-Indian (as we call the people who hunted the now extinct animals). 'With his back to the wall, Hrdlicka was denying everything to maintain his position that man could be anything, anything at all, but not ancient in America,' [Edwin N.] Wilmsen says. But eventually the finds accumulated to such an extent that even the skeptics had to bow to the evidence.' [52]
As we will see, the advocates of the overkill theory are just as avid in their denial that ancient man was in the Americas prior to 12,000 years ago and may deny anything, anything at all, to maintain their position.
I have added this material to show the nature of how scientific debates about anthropology are often carried out by disturbed scholars. Velikovskians are quite familiar with dictatorial types like Hrdlicka. But as we proceed, we will learn Hrdlicka is only one of a long line of angry scientists for whom opposition brings out this kind of behavior.
In time, however, discoveries of the Clovis people together, with extinct megafauna bones in America, could not be denied, but the conclusion and overall dogma was that this could go back no more than to around 12,000 years B.P. Cracks in this time constraint then began to appear. Of particular importance are two archeological discoveries in North America, that undermine this time constraint. One is at Calico in California, and the other is in a location in the Yukon near the Old Crow River.
'Two periods of human occupation have been dated at Calico. From about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago the area was inhabited by what [R. D.] Simpson suggests was a hunting-gathering people with more sophisticated tools, including stone flaked on both sides. In deeper layers estimated to be at least 200,000 years old are the simpler flakes of people she says, who probably gathered plants and other foods.' [53]
To add to this, archeological work carried out in a rock shelter in Meadowcroft, Pennsylvania, J. M. Adovasio and his colleagues reported that they have 50 correlated consistent dates some of which were derived by employing accelerator mass spectrometry, that place man at that site 14,000 or 14,500 years ago. [54]
Grayson describes the Meadowcroft research this way.
'The deepest Meadowcroft deposits appear to date about 31,000 years ago ... Indeed, Meadowcroft is one of the best-dated archaeological sites in the world, Adovasio having obtained 52 radiocarbon dates for the site, dates that range from 175 years ago at the top ... to 31,000 years ago at the bottom.
'These dates produce a consistent picture of the accumulation of deposits in Meadowcroft, since, with extremely rare exceptions, as the deposits get deeper, the dates get older, just as should happen.' [55]
In addition, as far away as Chile, in South America at a site near Monte Verde, strong evidence that it was occupied by humans about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago was uncovered. If ancient man had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 B.P., they would have taken at a minimum a thousand years to migrate down to Monte Verde. Significantly, radiocarbon dates at the dig go back 33,000 years. [56]
To show the depth of absurdity to which advocates of the idea that man was in the Americas no earlier than 12,000 years ago, I cite Science Frontiers, No. 105 for May-Jun 1996, page 2 titled 'Darwinism in Archeology.'
'Archeologists were initially attracted to Pedra Furada, in northeastern Brazil ... But it is not the rock art that is controversial about Pedra Furada; it is the 595 pieces of quartz selected by French archeologist N. Guidon. These bits of stone closely resemble human-crafted choppers, scrapers, and cutting tools. Indeed, if they had been found in more recent deposits, they would have been judged 'man-made' by everyone. The trouble is that Guidon has dated them at 50,000 B.P. -- a date mainstream archeologists cannot swallow ...
'How are the Pedra Furada chipped stoned explained by the mainstream archaeologists? They are geofacts, not artifacts. They were created when quartzite rocks were released by erosion and fell off cliffs to be smashed upon impact below. Gravity and not the human hand broke the quartz into pieces that just happen to look like prehistoric tools. F. Parenti, a coworker of Guidon, has tried to exorcise the geofact argument, which is used whenever tools are 'too old' by showing that the 595 pieces of quartz have characteristics quite unlike those created by natural flaking.
'The doubters are unswayed. You see, despite Parenti's analysis there remains a minute chance that a falling rock will fracture into pieces one of which will look human made. Maybe only one falling rock in 10,000 will fracture 'unnaturally'; make it one in 10,000,000; it doesn't matter.
''Of course, no matter how rare the chances, given sufficient time and raw material -- Pedra Furada had plenty of both -- nature can magnify even the slimmest odds to the point where geofacts occur in detectable frequencies.'
'In this argument, you see how our title 'Darwinism in Archeology' came to be. Random events (rock falls or mutations) plus a sorting mechanism (human selection or natural selection) can produce geofacts or new species. This sort of explanatory mechanism can, in principle, explain just about anything (Meltzer, David; 'Stones of Contention,' New Scientist, p. 31, June 24, 1995.)
'R. Dennell and L. Hurcombe, two archeologists faced with the geofact problem at their Pakistan dig, tried to solve it experimentally. They deliberately dropped quartzite rocks from heights onto hard surfaces. They concluded,
''While conceding that had we conducted the experiment with a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand stones, a few might have fractures, we would nevertheless maintain that the chances of any showing multiple, multi-directional flaking and all with bulbs of percussion are as remote as the proverbial monkey typing Shakespeare. (Dennell, Robin, and Hurcombe, Linda; 'Comment on Pedra Furada,' Antiquity, 69:604 1995).'
No argument by those who refuse to face the mounting evidence that man was in America earlier than 12,000 years ago is too absurd to be excluded. Like all experts, they can twist the evidence to say just about anything they want it to say.
To damage Guidon's evidence at Pedra Furada, D. J. Meltzer, et al., who visited the site, still claimed the artifacts were really geofacts. [57] The reply by Guidon, et la., was blistering. They accused their critics of having their facts wrong and being biased because of their allegiance to the 12,000 year people-in-America paradigm. Guidon and Pessis called Meltzer, et al.'s published work 'Falsehood or Untruth' and then stated bluntly,
'The article by Meltzer, et al., (1994) is based on partial data and false information (highlighted below). Its battery of questions takes us by surprise; none of the three colleagues [who criticized our work] came up with these questions during the 1993 meeting -- mounted precisely to generate direct dialogue on the peopling of America. We disagree with their statement, 'the comments on Pedra Furada are not offered lightly' (p. 696). The comments are worthless because they are based on partial and incorrect knowledge.
'We believe that the initial intention of the authors was different; they got carried away into an exercise in academic style from a fragile scientific base of fragmentary data and with a skepticism born of a subjective conviction.' [58]
Jeffrey Goodman's comments well sums up the dogmatism attached to the dismissal of ancient stone artifacts that challenge the 12,000 year barrier.
'Even more incriminating evidence against the generally accepted ... theory emerged when it became clear that findings at many sites were challenging the sanctity of the 10,000 B.C. entry date, the 'official' date for man's first appearance in the New World. These new sites suggested much earlier dates, but since they didn't yield beautifully fashioned pressure flaking points such as the Clovis and Folsom sites had, they were immediately suspect. Instead of spear points these sites contained very crude chipped stone tools such as choppers, scrapers, and simple stone flakes. A much more primitive manufacturer was pictured, and to some, the crudeness of these materials indicted that they weren't made by man at all, but by nature imitating man via such natural processes as thermal flaking from frost and heat and from rocks tumbling in streams or down hills or being ground up in mud flows, though there weren't any studies to support this contention. There simply were no scientific grounds for contending that nature could fashion stones in a way indistinguishable from man. This led one of the authorities in the field to say that 'certain archaeologists wouldn't accept any really crude and early stone tools even if they somehow saw the tools being made with their own eyes.'' [59]
In fact, there has been an organized and concerted effort to deny the evidence of man in America prior to 12,000 B.P. by a group William R. Corliss dubs the Clovis Police:
'A new group of law-enforcers has been formed. Although the Clovis Police do not carry guns, they [like Hrdlicka] will make sure that all who stray from the archeological mainstream will be held up for censure. (Does this mean denial of funds, access to journals?) The 'law' that the Clovis Police will enforce says that humans did not enter the New World before 12,000 B.P. -- the oldest date attributed to the Clovis people ... The members of the Clovis squad and their objectives can be found in a recent issue of Science, [by] Marshall, Eliot, 'Clovis Counterrevolution' [Vol.] 249 [p.] 738, 1990.' [60]
The Clovis Police squad's totalitarian manifesto has evidently borne fruit as presented by R. Bonnischsen of the University of Maine.
'Numerous meritorious grant proposals have been rejected because their goals and objectives were incompatible with entrenched academic opinion ... At least five South American archeologists admitted that they are suppressing pre-12,000-year-old data out of fear that their funds will be cut off by American colleagues who endorse the short -- chronology school of thought.' [61]
Warwick Bray, in 'The Paleo-Indian Debate,' in Nature shows just how strongly advocates of the view that man could only be in the Americas no earlier than 12,000 years ago quotes anthropologist E. Leach who said of the way they handle data and evidence:
'Justification in terms of scientific methodology is in part self-deception, for when the figures turn out wrong [regarding man in America prior to 12,000 B.P.] the true believer will always shuffle the figures; when contrary evidence turns up he throws doubt upon the credentials of the investigator.' [62]
Let it be made absolutely clear that some scientists will do anything to one of their colleagues who presents evidence that will overturn the paradigm to which they have invested their professional lives. As Vine Deloria shows.
'The most blatant incident concerned Dr. Thomas Lee of Canada. Excavations were made at a site in Canada, Sheguiandah, between 1951 and 1955 by Lee, an anthropologist working at the National Museum of Canada. Preliminary evidence indicated the site might be between 30,000 and 100,000 years old.
'The evidence not only conflicted with accepted doctrine, it would have made it necessary to revise estimates of the stages of North American glaciation. The scientific establishment went after Lee. He lost his position at the museum and some of his papers on the discovery were 'lost.' 'I was hounded from my Canadian government position by certain American citizens on both sides of the border and driven into eight long years of blacklisting, and enforced unemployment,' Lee wrote.' [63]
Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson describe what happened to Lee thus:
'In the early 1950's, Thomas E. Lee of the National Museum of Canada found advanced stone tools in glacier deposits at Sheguiandah, on Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. Geologists John Sanford of Wayne State University argued that the oldest Sheguiandah tools were at least 65,000 years old and might be as much as 125,000 years old. For those adhering to standard views on North American prehistory, such ages were unacceptable. Humans supposedly entered North America from Siberia about 12,000 years ago.
'Thomas E. Lee complained: 'The site's discoverer [Lee] was hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several prominent authors ... ; the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for refusing to fire [Lee] the discoverer, the Director of the National Museum who had proposed having a monograph on the site published, was himself fired and driven into exile; official positions of prestige and power were exercised in an effort to gain control over just six Sheguiandah specimens that had not gone under cover; and the site has been turned into a tourist resort ... Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would have forced the rewriting of almost every book in the business. It had to be killed it was killed.' [64]
In commenting on Cremo and Thompson's book, Bradley T. Lepper admits:
'Cremo and Thompson are right about the extreme conservatism of many archaeologists and physical anthropologists. While an undergraduate at a prominent southwest university, I participated in classroom discussions about the claims for a very early [prior to 12,000 B.P.] occupation at the Timlin site (in New York) which had just been announced. The professor surprised me when she stated flatly that if the dates were correct then it was 'obviously not a site' [of early man]. The dismissal of the possibility of such an ancient site without an examination of the data or even a careful reading of the published claim is dogmatism ...' [65]
A typical description of how this suppressive behavior is exerted is related to the work of George Carter of Texas A and M University who dug up an
'... early stone tool industry reminiscent of the European eoliths ... discovered ... in the 1950's at the Texas Street excavation in San Diego. At this site, Carter claimed to have found hearths, and crude stone tools at levels corresponding to the last interglacial period some 80,000-90,000 years ago. Critics scoffed at these claims, referring to Carter's alleged tools as products of nature, or 'cartifacts,' and Carter was later publicly defamed in a Harvard [University] course on 'Fantastic Archeology.' However, Carter gave clear criteria for distinguishing between his tools and naturally broken rocks, and lithic experts such as John Witthoft have endorsed his claims.
'In 1973, Carter conducted more extensive excavations at Texas Street and invited numerous archeologists to come and view the site firsthand. Almost none responded. Carter stated: 'San Diego State University adamantly, refused to look at work in its own backyard.'
'In 1960, an editor of Science, the journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, asked Carter to submit an article about early humans in America. Carter did so, but when the editor sent the article out to two scholars for review they rejected it.
'Upon being informed of this by the editor Carter replied in a letter, dated February 2, 1960: 'I must assume that you had no idea of the intensity of feeling that reigns in the field. It is nearly hopeless to try to convey some idea of the status of the field of Early Man in America at the moment. But just for fun: I have a correspondent whose name I cannot use for though he thinks that I am right, he could lose his job for saying so. I have another anonymous correspondent who as a graduate student found evidence that would tend to prove me right. He and his fellow students buried the evidence. They were certain that to bring it in would cost them their chance for their Ph.D.'s. At a meeting, a young professional approached me to say, 'I hope you really pour it on them. I would say it if I dared, but it would cost me my job.' At another meeting, a young man sidled up to say, 'In dig x they found core tools like yours at the bottom but didn't published them.'' [66]
The authors go on to show on the same page and the next:
'The inhibiting effect of negative propaganda on the evaluation of Carter's discoveries is described by archeologist Brian Reeves, who wrote with his coauthors in 1986: 'Were actual artifacts uncovered at Texas Street, and is the site really Last Interglacial in age? ... Because of the weight of critical 'evidence' preserved by established archeologists, the senior author [Reeves], like most other archaeologists, accepted the position of the skeptics uncritically dismissing the sites and the objects as natural phenomena.' But when he took the trouble to look at the evidence himself, Reeves changed his mind.'
Furthermore, on an NBC television special, The Mysterious Origins of Man, presented in New York City in March 1996, it was revealed that archeologist Virginia Steen McIntyre had an experience very similar to Lee's. She had been digging in Mexico in 1966 and found human artifacts at a deep level of the excavation. These were dated by two dating methods, uranium and crystal. McIntyre had expected a 20,000 year age, but both dating methods gave a much greater age. Rather than deny the facts uncovered, she naively felt the unvarnished evidence should be presented via publication to the scientific world. What followed was that she was fired from her job, the site was closed and then filled in and she has been blacklisted from work in her field.
Commenting on the behavior of the establishment, Cremo and Thompson say of the Steen-McIntyre affair:
'The anomalous findings ... resulted in personal abuse and professional penalties, including withholding of funds and loss of job, facilities and reputation for Virginia Steen McIntyre. Her case opens a rare window into the actual social processes of data suppression in paleoanthropology, processes that involve a great deal of conflict and hurt.
'A final note -- we ourselves once tried to secure permission to reproduce photographs of the Hueyattaco artifacts in a publication. We were informed that permission would be denied if we intended to mention the 'lunatic fringe' date of 250,000 years.' [67]
As reported in The New York Times by John Noble Wilford, Anna C. Roosevelt has found evidence in a cave in Brazil of a people unrelated to the Clovis who were in South America at the same time that the ancestors of the Clovis people settled in the United States. Dr. Betty J. Meggers, an influential archeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has dogmatically and resolutely denied this evidence. Because Dr. Roosevelt is a descendant of President Theodore Roosevelt, she cannot be kicked out of the profession without considerable uproar and deep embarrassment to it. Her work received
'... a scorching review in 1992 in The Journal of Field Archeology [at which] Dr. Meggers complained of its 'polemical tone' and 'extravagant claims.'
'On all sides archeologists are distressed that the conflict between Dr. Roosevelt and Dr. Meggers has descended into a name-calling feud. Dr. Roosevelt has repeatedly charged Dr. Meggers with using her influence to block those who do not share her views from working in the region.' [68]
This is not related only to the early peopling of the Americas but also to the lifestyles of these early people who apparently were not hunters of the megafauna but 'may have consumed more plants, fish and small game than had been assumed. [69] Jeff Hecht of New Scientist, describes Roosevelt's work thus:
'An ancient campsite in a Brazilian cave is forcing anthropologists to rethink their ideas about the history of human settlement in the Americas.
'The traditional views that all native Americans descended from a group called the Clovis people who crossed the Bering Strait some 11,500 years ago ... But an international team headed by Anna Roosevelt of the Field Museum in Chicago has found that people living in the Amazon at about the same time as Clovis culture had a different lifestyle and used quite different tools ...
'... although nobody has found Clovis tools in South America, most early human sites in the continent have been found in the dry or temperate zones that the Clovis people seemed to favour -- leading anthropologists to assume that the first South Americans were from Clovis stock.
'Roosevelt decided to look for human artifacts in tropical rainforests, which Paleo-Indian researchers have rarely explored. After reading 19th century accounts of stone tools and cave paintings in the Amazon, she teamed up with South American anthropologists to locate a cave at Monte Alegre [Brazil], several hundred kilometers from the present mouth of the Amazon which contained a wealth of human artifacts ...
'Evidence of early humans includes rock paintings and debris in 2.5 metres [8 feet] of soil on the floor of the cave. Stone spearheads found in the cave differ from Clovis tools: They are triangular and have backwards-facing barbs ...
'In addition, the researchers excavated wood fragments, charcoal, remains of fruit, nut shells, and the remains of many different animals, including birds, mammals, amphibians, fish and shellfish. The oldest debris dates from 11,145 years ago. Roosevelt says that the remains 'point ... to broad-spectrum foraging,' rather than the hunting associated with Clovis culture.
'Many other specialists had already questioned the traditional view that the earliest Americans were big game hunters. 'They must have been foraging as well,' says John Hoffecker of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. He notes that larger animal bones are preserved better than those of smaller animals, while plant remains rarely survive.' [70]
The evidence thoroughly contradicts the hunting hypothesis on two levels. First, it shows that people were in South America about 350 years after Clovis people supposedly crossed the Bering Strait. One would have expected them to be in South America, at the very least, 1,000 years later. If they descended from Clovis people, why didn't they use the same tools? After all, Clovis tools did not change greatly while they inhabited North America. This suggests these Amazonians were not descendants of the Clovis.
The reasons, therefore, for the behavior of those who oppose Roosevelt's research, especially those who support the hunting hypothesis, is understandable. Roosevelt's research is destroying their life's work and they simply don't know how to get rid of her without showing the world that their science is not science but institutionalized dogma.
Not only does Dr. Roosevelt's work show that Amerindians were not extensively big-game hunters, but after a half century of obstruction, the 12,000 year wall is beginning to crumble. As reported by John Noble Wilford, Monte Verde was occupied by man at least 13,000 years ago! [71] This will lead, I believe, to finally destroying the Clovis Police's mandate and in a few years, the admission will be made that man was in America long before the blitzkrieg hunting theory allows and will deeply undercut it and kill it. According to the report, the people at Monte Verde were also not extensively big-game hunters.
'... a group of 20 to 30 people occupied Monte Verde for a year or so. They lived in shelters covered in animal hides. They gathered berries in spring, chestnuts in fall, and also ate potatoes, mushrooms, and marsh grasses. They hunted small game, and also ancestors of the llama, and sometimes went down to the Pacific, 30 miles away, for shellfish. They were hunters and gatherers.' [72]
Ward says, 'The new South American record [from Brazil] shows people living in a jungle region ... subsisting on berries, fruit, and other items, just as many local people today.' [73]
This evidence of the age of the site and the hunter gathering behavior of the people is a second double blow to the hunting hypothesis. First, animals in America coexisted with man long before the extinction occurred. Second, the Indians were not extensively big game hunters. It will be interesting to see what those advocates of the overkill blitzkrieg concept will summon to grab their theory out of the jaws of this evidence. Reputations and the life work of a great many hunter school doyens are on the line.
A perfect example of how control is exerted by a senior researcher in anthropology on a younger is described by Kenneth Good with David Chanoff in their book, Into the Heart. Good, as a Ph.D. candidate, was sent into South American jungles to evaluate his mentor's thesis which was in debate. His mentor, Napoleon Chagnon, had claimed that a tribe of people, the Yanamama, were a wild, uncontrolled, fierce, murdering people. Marvin Harris, of Columbia University, had strongly opposed this concept of people being inherently violent, like the ancient hunters. Good was sent by Chagnon to document evidence that they were indeed killers. What Good discovered was that the evidence would not support Chagnon's thesis and what followed led to a confrontation in which Chagnon suggested that Good get a job doing other work 'Because you're not going to get into any other anthropology department. I'll see to that,' he said. [74]
To combat some of these allegations and many others I have presented above about the outrageous and reckless behavior of scientists, Jo Wodak and David Oldroyd, in a review of Cremo and Thompson's book cited above, claim:
'We concede that the science of paleoanthropology does not have an unblemished record, though that does not mean that it is riddled with fraud. It is true, however, that it is a branch of science that has been characterized by passionate controversies, and it has been peculiarly prone to the effect of the theory-ladenness of observations. It is also subject to large stories ('scenarios') have to be told on the basis of often limited or slender evidence.' [75] [However Schiller admits]
'... reconstructing the history of early man in America is in some respects a more speculative business than it is in Africa, and interpretations are more divergent. Controversies among anthropologists tend to be more numerous, more spirited, and sometimes downright nasty. The opinions expressed about their colleagues by some of the experts I interviewed verged on insult, and differences of opinion are so bitter that there are those who will not sit at the same table with others. It makes for lively, professional meetings.' [76]
Given the prior evidence outlined of behavior that is academically and scientifically indefensible, it is rather clear that even when the actions of senior researchers are exposed, those within the field are constitutionally incapable of facing the facts. If these forms of behavior aren't addressed, then conditions can only become worse and inquisitorial conduct will continue to flourish.
Now all this behavior is not as unusual as it has been made out to be. Most scientists have great trouble dealing with such totalitarian actions and refuse to believe their beloved science is different than that of other human institutions. But these are workers who have never attempted to present evidence that thoroughly contradicts the reigning paradigm. Those who have challenged these deeply held theoretical constructs soon find that they are persona non grata in their field and become the subject of all the mechanisms of coercion, suppression and hostility expressed in politics.
Yet Paul S. Martin, the leading exponent of the overkill hypothesis, still claims, 'If humans lived in the New World more than 12,000 years ago, there would be no secret about it.' [77] How on Earth can one believe that these advocates of the hunting hypothesis believe or care anything about the tenets of good science when one can observe Lycenkoism being carried out in broad daylight and with the scientific press and the popular press being so unwilling to raise a chorus of denunciation to the public regarding these matters? By the lack of clear and forthright denunciation regarding this affront to science and decency the press's lack of vigor becomes a form of tacit collusion.
As anyone with sense can see, science and academia can act just as totalitarian and fascist as any dictatorial institution or regime. The true reason for this type of behavior meted out to Lee and McIntyre and others is that their finds pointed to the concept that man was in America in Mexico and Canada much earlier than accepted and destroyed the theory that man reached the middle Americas only 12,000 years go.
But then in 1961, parts of human skeletons were uncovered in water laid sand in a valley in Alberta, Canada, which geologists claimed were at least 18,000 years old. [78] The bones of an infant of about four months old were found, including parts of the scapula, a collarbone, a fragment of femur, two ribs and two smashed vertebrae. These fossil remains were buried beneath 33 feet of alluvium which had a sheet of glacial till above it on the surface. The only way to interpret this was to suggest the child died and was either buried slowly or rapidly by alluvium. Then the ice sheet advanced and covered over the area with glacial till. The geologist, A. McS. Stalker, gave the date for the fossil as 30,000 to 40,000 years B.P., or perhaps 20,000 years B.P. The point that must be stressed is that 'Each advance [by the ice sheet] is marked by a later of till.' [79] Thus, the burial occurred prior to the last glacial advance.
To get around this impossible situation, the bones were radiocarbon dated to about 4,000 years old. [80] What was omitted about the date offered was that the bones had been kept in preservatives loaded with carbon-14 which would lower the age of the date. Although there are doubts about this date, nearby at a place called Medicine Hat, human stone artifacts were found and they, too, dated from between 17,000 to 20,000 years B.P. Naturally, these artifacts were dismissed as being caused by nature.
L. Krishtalka, a critic of the overkill theory, goes so far as to accuse the proponents of that concept of willfully culling the data.
'Their selective acceptance of only 'good' dates -- those that fit the model (for example, dates of human beings in North America no older than 12,000 yr B.P., and those for mammoths no younger than 10,000 yr B.P.) -- may play fast and loose with the evidence that doesn't fit.' [81]
What all this displays is that evidence is playing less and less of a role in this scientific debate. The tactics involved are clearly aimed at winning by techniques that smack of intimidation and propaganda, the same behavior evidenced by Hrdlicka".
[...]
#historical
Note: Although Ginenthal's purpose in telling the story of Ales Hrdlicka and the Clovis Police is to cast doubt upon the overkill hypothesis, my motive here is different. To be clear, I do not defend the validity of any of the proposed dates which follow, and this 1997 text may not be reflective of the current dominant theory for the peopling of the Americas.
My purpose here is to instead emphasize a more fundamental lesson -- the way in which the chronology itself is constructed through sociological forces. The dates subsequently published are selected as right or wrong in accordance with whether or not they provide validation to these historical sociological forces. The fact of the matter is that we cannot understand the chronology or the dates in full without a look at the sociology of the domains where they are employed.
The quote in the small circled icon comes from here ...
http://www.slideshare.net/historyteacher38668/his-2213-who-were-the-first-americans-when-did-they-arrive-here-8938083
The following excerpt comes from ...
http://immanuelvelikovsky.com/Mammoth.pdf
(see original for references until I add them here)
The Extinction of the Mammoth
by Charles Ginenthal
The Velikovskian: A Journal of Myth, History and Science
Quota pars operis tanti nobis committitur?
Vol III, Nos. 2 and 3
A selection from Chapter 2: The Age of Man in America
"Charles Lyell, upon his realization that there had been a recent extinction of the giant animals suggested that the extermination via hunting by man 'is the first idea presented to the mind of almost every naturalist.' [33] Eleven years later, Richard Owen claimed that in the Americas, the extinction could have come about through the 'appearance of mankind on a limited tract of land not before inhabited.' [34]
[...]
The history of the time in which the mammoth lived, as related to man, has a colorful and interesting history which will be disclosed below. The point I wish to emphasize is that once a powerful and illustrious scientist makes a statement, it often becomes dogma for generations to follow and acts to seriously impede any progress toward solution based on any new evidence. The following discussion is, therefore, germane not only as science, but as history about the time in which the mammoths lived in the arctic.
One, therefore, ought to know fairly precisely the dating of man's arrival in the Americas and the correct date for the extinction; the extinction should be closely timed to the arrival of human hunters. Donald K. Grayson, however, shows, 'The timing of Ice Age extinctions is really very poorly understood ... Radio carbon chronologies are bad in North America and worse in Europe.' [44] However, if it could be firmly established that man lived in the Americas for longer than 10,000 to 12,000 years, the synchrony of hunters arriving in America, and the onset and, soon thereafter, extinction or overkill thesis, would fail. The overkill hypothesis is based, in large measure, on this synchrony which has become archeological dogma over the past 50 years, namely that man has not been in North America prior to about 12,000 years B.P., when he crossed the land bridge at the Bering Strait and then began this slaughter.
'The quest for the origin of the Americans has been going on ever since Columbus ... Although the Bible doesn't mention them [the Indians], the Pope in 1512 officially declared them to be descendants of Adam and Eve. New England Protestant cleric Cotton Mather disagreed; he believed they were brought here by the devil. Others linked them with the 'lost ten tribes' of Israel, with ancient Greeks, Trojans, Egyptians, Norwegians, and the inhabitants of the mythical continents of Atlantis and Mu.' [45]
But the 12,000 year date was not conceived of until early in the 20th century. According to Roger Lewin,
''The origins of American Indians is a topic that has occupied the minds of western scholars for nearly 500 years,' explains Richard Morland of the Canadian Museum in Ottawa. In the late eighteenth century, for instance, Thomas Jefferson became convinced on the basis of archaeological and linguistic evidence that America Indians shared a common origin with northern Asiatics. And the diversity of America Indian languages persuaded him that they had a very long history. Through Darwin's time, scholars even suggested that American Indian history went back perhaps as far as 100,000 years. This notion was squashed at the turn of the century by American anthropologists W. H. Holmes and Ales Hrdlicka.' [46]
The first hurdle to overcome was the opposition of Ales Hrdlicka, like Cuvier, he said man had not been in America with the mammoth.
'The main authority on these topics ... was the Czech-born anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka, who in 1903 became the Smithsonian Institution's first curator of physical anthropology. Hrdlicka, a brilliant scientist and a devastating debater, systematically examined and confidently dismissed all evidence offered to show man's antiquity in the New World. He brushed aside ... discoveries [of human relics found with mammoths or other ancient extinct creatures] by saying that the human relics had accidentally became mixed with those of extinct animals ...
'As he grew older his opinions hardened into prejudices, which he proclaimed so vehemently that most scientists thought it would be improper to hold an opposing belief. No one wanted to contradict fiery old Hrdlicka, for when anyone dared to suggest that men had lived in the United States in the time of big extinct mammals, Hrdlicka immediately loosed a barrage of denunciation.' [47]
The point I wish to stress is that when a powerful figure like Hrdlicka intimidates professionals in less powerful and less secure positions, then good science cannot be done. And I stress that this is one of the basic problems endemic to modern science. As Robert Silverberg shows, as Hrdlicka,
'grew older his opinions hardened into prejudices, and he proclaimed his ideas so vehemently and with such a show of authority that it became professionally dangerous for any scientist to try to contradict them. Only a brave archeologist or a foolish one would dare to tangle with Hrdlicka. One archeologist of the 1920's warned his pupils, not entirely jokingly, 'if you ever find evidence of human life in [America] in a context which is ancient, bury it carefully, but don't forget about it'.' [48]
A marvelous story about Hrdlicka is told by paleontologist, Louis Leakey:
'Back in 1929-1930 when I was teaching students at the University of Cambridge ... I began to tell my students that man must have been in the New World [for] at least 15,000 years. I shall never forget when Ales Hrdlicka, that great man from the Smithsonian Institution, happened to be at Cambridge, and he was told by my professor (I was only a student supervisor) that Dr. Leakey was telling students that man must have been in America 15,000 or more years ago. He burst into my rooms -- he didn't even wait to shake hands,
'Hrdlicka said, 'Leakey, what's this I hear? Are you preaching heresy?'
''No, Sir!' said Leakey.
'Hrdlicka replied, 'You are! You are telling students that man was in America 15,000 years ago. What evidence have you?'
'Leakey answered, 'No positive evidence. Purely circumstantial evidence. But with man from Alaska to Cape Horn, with many different languages and at least two civilizations, it is not possible that he was present only the few thousand years that you at present allow.'' [49]
Leakey was lucky that he survived this encounter. Others were not so lucky. Just imagine the arrogance of Hrdlicka breaking into someone's rooms without first knocking at the door, the lack of control in this case exhibits disturbed behavior.
For any reader who believes I am being unduly severe on Hrdlicka, painting him as a raving neurotic. I add this item by C. W. Ceram:
'He [Hrdlicka] was an odd bird in other respects also. For example, he made it a rule that all his associates had to will their skulls to science, but in his own last will he stipulated that he was to be cremated, his ashes mingled with those of his first wife and deposited in an urn in the Smithsonian Institution.' [50]
Hrdlicka had no qualms about destroying anyone that he felt endangered his views of the peopling of the New World. According to Lewin, G. Edward Lewis, a doctoral candidate at Yale University on an expedition to the Siwalik Hills of India, found fossils of a possible hominid which he dubbed Ramapithecus, or 'Rama's age.' Hrdlicka,
'... chose to damn Ramapithecus in the pages of the American Journal of Science ... where Lewis had published his claims for the fossil. In six short pages Hrdlicka tore into Lewis' work, accusing the young man of committing 'a series of errors' and reaching an 'utterly unjustifiable' conclusion. Ramapithecus, he said, was just an ape [and not a hominid] ...
'Hrdlicka, he [Lewis] says, 'thought he was the anointed and elect prophet who had been foreordained and chosen to make such discoveries and demolish the work of anyone else.' Hrdlicka's paper was somewhat self-contradictory, and says [Elwyn] Simons, [of Yale] 'scattered with blunders and naivetes.' 'The man didn't know what he was talking about,' recalls Lewis. 'So I could not take the paper's content seriously, but did take seriously the possibility of his damaging my reputation.'
'As an attempt to salvage his reputation Lewis penned 'an unhurried and temperate reply.' The rebuttal never found the printed page, however, because the editor of the American Journal of Science, Lewis' own supervisor, [Richard Swann] Lull, declined to accept it. 'They refused to publish it,' says Lewis, 'although they admitted that I had written nothing offensive, because they said Hrdlicka was an important man, and I was a young man whose reputation would be damaged ... inasmuch as the baldly stated facts and courteous comments would make him look like a fool!' Lewis' thesis which is described by [David] Pilbeam [a British anthropologist] as 'a very good piece of work' and by Simons as 'the best opinion people could reach at the time' -- was never published ...
'Hrdlicka had good reason to want to discredit Lewis' work, says Frank Spencer, a scholar of this period of the history of paleontology and of Hrdlicka in particular. 'It has nothing to do with the shape of the jaw,' he suggests. 'It had to do with where the jaw came from -- namely, the fringes of Central Asia.' In Hrdlicka's view, the western part of the Old World was the wellspring of human origins. Everything in his scheme depended upon this, including his ideas on the eventual peopling of the New World. To have the first hominids appearing in the eastern part of the Old World [so they would arrive in the New World prior to 12,000 B.P.] was therefore simply unacceptable. 'So he did a hatchet job on Lewis' work,' says Spencer.' [51]
Ceram describes Hrdlicka's behavior thus:
'Ales Hrdlicka of the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, blocked all research into the past for a whole generation ...
'He was ruthless in enforcing his dominance upon younger men ...
'Even in 1928, by which time the importance of the Folsom find was clear to everyone, Hrdlicka had the temerity to decree at a meeting of the New York Academy that there could not have been a Paleo-Indian (as we call the people who hunted the now extinct animals). 'With his back to the wall, Hrdlicka was denying everything to maintain his position that man could be anything, anything at all, but not ancient in America,' [Edwin N.] Wilmsen says. But eventually the finds accumulated to such an extent that even the skeptics had to bow to the evidence.' [52]
As we will see, the advocates of the overkill theory are just as avid in their denial that ancient man was in the Americas prior to 12,000 years ago and may deny anything, anything at all, to maintain their position.
I have added this material to show the nature of how scientific debates about anthropology are often carried out by disturbed scholars. Velikovskians are quite familiar with dictatorial types like Hrdlicka. But as we proceed, we will learn Hrdlicka is only one of a long line of angry scientists for whom opposition brings out this kind of behavior.
In time, however, discoveries of the Clovis people together, with extinct megafauna bones in America, could not be denied, but the conclusion and overall dogma was that this could go back no more than to around 12,000 years B.P. Cracks in this time constraint then began to appear. Of particular importance are two archeological discoveries in North America, that undermine this time constraint. One is at Calico in California, and the other is in a location in the Yukon near the Old Crow River.
'Two periods of human occupation have been dated at Calico. From about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago the area was inhabited by what [R. D.] Simpson suggests was a hunting-gathering people with more sophisticated tools, including stone flaked on both sides. In deeper layers estimated to be at least 200,000 years old are the simpler flakes of people she says, who probably gathered plants and other foods.' [53]
To add to this, archeological work carried out in a rock shelter in Meadowcroft, Pennsylvania, J. M. Adovasio and his colleagues reported that they have 50 correlated consistent dates some of which were derived by employing accelerator mass spectrometry, that place man at that site 14,000 or 14,500 years ago. [54]
Grayson describes the Meadowcroft research this way.
'The deepest Meadowcroft deposits appear to date about 31,000 years ago ... Indeed, Meadowcroft is one of the best-dated archaeological sites in the world, Adovasio having obtained 52 radiocarbon dates for the site, dates that range from 175 years ago at the top ... to 31,000 years ago at the bottom.
'These dates produce a consistent picture of the accumulation of deposits in Meadowcroft, since, with extremely rare exceptions, as the deposits get deeper, the dates get older, just as should happen.' [55]
In addition, as far away as Chile, in South America at a site near Monte Verde, strong evidence that it was occupied by humans about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago was uncovered. If ancient man had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 B.P., they would have taken at a minimum a thousand years to migrate down to Monte Verde. Significantly, radiocarbon dates at the dig go back 33,000 years. [56]
To show the depth of absurdity to which advocates of the idea that man was in the Americas no earlier than 12,000 years ago, I cite Science Frontiers, No. 105 for May-Jun 1996, page 2 titled 'Darwinism in Archeology.'
'Archeologists were initially attracted to Pedra Furada, in northeastern Brazil ... But it is not the rock art that is controversial about Pedra Furada; it is the 595 pieces of quartz selected by French archeologist N. Guidon. These bits of stone closely resemble human-crafted choppers, scrapers, and cutting tools. Indeed, if they had been found in more recent deposits, they would have been judged 'man-made' by everyone. The trouble is that Guidon has dated them at 50,000 B.P. -- a date mainstream archeologists cannot swallow ...
'How are the Pedra Furada chipped stoned explained by the mainstream archaeologists? They are geofacts, not artifacts. They were created when quartzite rocks were released by erosion and fell off cliffs to be smashed upon impact below. Gravity and not the human hand broke the quartz into pieces that just happen to look like prehistoric tools. F. Parenti, a coworker of Guidon, has tried to exorcise the geofact argument, which is used whenever tools are 'too old' by showing that the 595 pieces of quartz have characteristics quite unlike those created by natural flaking.
'The doubters are unswayed. You see, despite Parenti's analysis there remains a minute chance that a falling rock will fracture into pieces one of which will look human made. Maybe only one falling rock in 10,000 will fracture 'unnaturally'; make it one in 10,000,000; it doesn't matter.
''Of course, no matter how rare the chances, given sufficient time and raw material -- Pedra Furada had plenty of both -- nature can magnify even the slimmest odds to the point where geofacts occur in detectable frequencies.'
'In this argument, you see how our title 'Darwinism in Archeology' came to be. Random events (rock falls or mutations) plus a sorting mechanism (human selection or natural selection) can produce geofacts or new species. This sort of explanatory mechanism can, in principle, explain just about anything (Meltzer, David; 'Stones of Contention,' New Scientist, p. 31, June 24, 1995.)
'R. Dennell and L. Hurcombe, two archeologists faced with the geofact problem at their Pakistan dig, tried to solve it experimentally. They deliberately dropped quartzite rocks from heights onto hard surfaces. They concluded,
''While conceding that had we conducted the experiment with a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand stones, a few might have fractures, we would nevertheless maintain that the chances of any showing multiple, multi-directional flaking and all with bulbs of percussion are as remote as the proverbial monkey typing Shakespeare. (Dennell, Robin, and Hurcombe, Linda; 'Comment on Pedra Furada,' Antiquity, 69:604 1995).'
No argument by those who refuse to face the mounting evidence that man was in America earlier than 12,000 years ago is too absurd to be excluded. Like all experts, they can twist the evidence to say just about anything they want it to say.
To damage Guidon's evidence at Pedra Furada, D. J. Meltzer, et al., who visited the site, still claimed the artifacts were really geofacts. [57] The reply by Guidon, et la., was blistering. They accused their critics of having their facts wrong and being biased because of their allegiance to the 12,000 year people-in-America paradigm. Guidon and Pessis called Meltzer, et al.'s published work 'Falsehood or Untruth' and then stated bluntly,
'The article by Meltzer, et al., (1994) is based on partial data and false information (highlighted below). Its battery of questions takes us by surprise; none of the three colleagues [who criticized our work] came up with these questions during the 1993 meeting -- mounted precisely to generate direct dialogue on the peopling of America. We disagree with their statement, 'the comments on Pedra Furada are not offered lightly' (p. 696). The comments are worthless because they are based on partial and incorrect knowledge.
'We believe that the initial intention of the authors was different; they got carried away into an exercise in academic style from a fragile scientific base of fragmentary data and with a skepticism born of a subjective conviction.' [58]
Jeffrey Goodman's comments well sums up the dogmatism attached to the dismissal of ancient stone artifacts that challenge the 12,000 year barrier.
'Even more incriminating evidence against the generally accepted ... theory emerged when it became clear that findings at many sites were challenging the sanctity of the 10,000 B.C. entry date, the 'official' date for man's first appearance in the New World. These new sites suggested much earlier dates, but since they didn't yield beautifully fashioned pressure flaking points such as the Clovis and Folsom sites had, they were immediately suspect. Instead of spear points these sites contained very crude chipped stone tools such as choppers, scrapers, and simple stone flakes. A much more primitive manufacturer was pictured, and to some, the crudeness of these materials indicted that they weren't made by man at all, but by nature imitating man via such natural processes as thermal flaking from frost and heat and from rocks tumbling in streams or down hills or being ground up in mud flows, though there weren't any studies to support this contention. There simply were no scientific grounds for contending that nature could fashion stones in a way indistinguishable from man. This led one of the authorities in the field to say that 'certain archaeologists wouldn't accept any really crude and early stone tools even if they somehow saw the tools being made with their own eyes.'' [59]
In fact, there has been an organized and concerted effort to deny the evidence of man in America prior to 12,000 B.P. by a group William R. Corliss dubs the Clovis Police:
'A new group of law-enforcers has been formed. Although the Clovis Police do not carry guns, they [like Hrdlicka] will make sure that all who stray from the archeological mainstream will be held up for censure. (Does this mean denial of funds, access to journals?) The 'law' that the Clovis Police will enforce says that humans did not enter the New World before 12,000 B.P. -- the oldest date attributed to the Clovis people ... The members of the Clovis squad and their objectives can be found in a recent issue of Science, [by] Marshall, Eliot, 'Clovis Counterrevolution' [Vol.] 249 [p.] 738, 1990.' [60]
The Clovis Police squad's totalitarian manifesto has evidently borne fruit as presented by R. Bonnischsen of the University of Maine.
'Numerous meritorious grant proposals have been rejected because their goals and objectives were incompatible with entrenched academic opinion ... At least five South American archeologists admitted that they are suppressing pre-12,000-year-old data out of fear that their funds will be cut off by American colleagues who endorse the short -- chronology school of thought.' [61]
Warwick Bray, in 'The Paleo-Indian Debate,' in Nature shows just how strongly advocates of the view that man could only be in the Americas no earlier than 12,000 years ago quotes anthropologist E. Leach who said of the way they handle data and evidence:
'Justification in terms of scientific methodology is in part self-deception, for when the figures turn out wrong [regarding man in America prior to 12,000 B.P.] the true believer will always shuffle the figures; when contrary evidence turns up he throws doubt upon the credentials of the investigator.' [62]
Let it be made absolutely clear that some scientists will do anything to one of their colleagues who presents evidence that will overturn the paradigm to which they have invested their professional lives. As Vine Deloria shows.
'The most blatant incident concerned Dr. Thomas Lee of Canada. Excavations were made at a site in Canada, Sheguiandah, between 1951 and 1955 by Lee, an anthropologist working at the National Museum of Canada. Preliminary evidence indicated the site might be between 30,000 and 100,000 years old.
'The evidence not only conflicted with accepted doctrine, it would have made it necessary to revise estimates of the stages of North American glaciation. The scientific establishment went after Lee. He lost his position at the museum and some of his papers on the discovery were 'lost.' 'I was hounded from my Canadian government position by certain American citizens on both sides of the border and driven into eight long years of blacklisting, and enforced unemployment,' Lee wrote.' [63]
Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson describe what happened to Lee thus:
'In the early 1950's, Thomas E. Lee of the National Museum of Canada found advanced stone tools in glacier deposits at Sheguiandah, on Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. Geologists John Sanford of Wayne State University argued that the oldest Sheguiandah tools were at least 65,000 years old and might be as much as 125,000 years old. For those adhering to standard views on North American prehistory, such ages were unacceptable. Humans supposedly entered North America from Siberia about 12,000 years ago.
'Thomas E. Lee complained: 'The site's discoverer [Lee] was hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several prominent authors ... ; the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for refusing to fire [Lee] the discoverer, the Director of the National Museum who had proposed having a monograph on the site published, was himself fired and driven into exile; official positions of prestige and power were exercised in an effort to gain control over just six Sheguiandah specimens that had not gone under cover; and the site has been turned into a tourist resort ... Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would have forced the rewriting of almost every book in the business. It had to be killed it was killed.' [64]
In commenting on Cremo and Thompson's book, Bradley T. Lepper admits:
'Cremo and Thompson are right about the extreme conservatism of many archaeologists and physical anthropologists. While an undergraduate at a prominent southwest university, I participated in classroom discussions about the claims for a very early [prior to 12,000 B.P.] occupation at the Timlin site (in New York) which had just been announced. The professor surprised me when she stated flatly that if the dates were correct then it was 'obviously not a site' [of early man]. The dismissal of the possibility of such an ancient site without an examination of the data or even a careful reading of the published claim is dogmatism ...' [65]
A typical description of how this suppressive behavior is exerted is related to the work of George Carter of Texas A and M University who dug up an
'... early stone tool industry reminiscent of the European eoliths ... discovered ... in the 1950's at the Texas Street excavation in San Diego. At this site, Carter claimed to have found hearths, and crude stone tools at levels corresponding to the last interglacial period some 80,000-90,000 years ago. Critics scoffed at these claims, referring to Carter's alleged tools as products of nature, or 'cartifacts,' and Carter was later publicly defamed in a Harvard [University] course on 'Fantastic Archeology.' However, Carter gave clear criteria for distinguishing between his tools and naturally broken rocks, and lithic experts such as John Witthoft have endorsed his claims.
'In 1973, Carter conducted more extensive excavations at Texas Street and invited numerous archeologists to come and view the site firsthand. Almost none responded. Carter stated: 'San Diego State University adamantly, refused to look at work in its own backyard.'
'In 1960, an editor of Science, the journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, asked Carter to submit an article about early humans in America. Carter did so, but when the editor sent the article out to two scholars for review they rejected it.
'Upon being informed of this by the editor Carter replied in a letter, dated February 2, 1960: 'I must assume that you had no idea of the intensity of feeling that reigns in the field. It is nearly hopeless to try to convey some idea of the status of the field of Early Man in America at the moment. But just for fun: I have a correspondent whose name I cannot use for though he thinks that I am right, he could lose his job for saying so. I have another anonymous correspondent who as a graduate student found evidence that would tend to prove me right. He and his fellow students buried the evidence. They were certain that to bring it in would cost them their chance for their Ph.D.'s. At a meeting, a young professional approached me to say, 'I hope you really pour it on them. I would say it if I dared, but it would cost me my job.' At another meeting, a young man sidled up to say, 'In dig x they found core tools like yours at the bottom but didn't published them.'' [66]
The authors go on to show on the same page and the next:
'The inhibiting effect of negative propaganda on the evaluation of Carter's discoveries is described by archeologist Brian Reeves, who wrote with his coauthors in 1986: 'Were actual artifacts uncovered at Texas Street, and is the site really Last Interglacial in age? ... Because of the weight of critical 'evidence' preserved by established archeologists, the senior author [Reeves], like most other archaeologists, accepted the position of the skeptics uncritically dismissing the sites and the objects as natural phenomena.' But when he took the trouble to look at the evidence himself, Reeves changed his mind.'
Furthermore, on an NBC television special, The Mysterious Origins of Man, presented in New York City in March 1996, it was revealed that archeologist Virginia Steen McIntyre had an experience very similar to Lee's. She had been digging in Mexico in 1966 and found human artifacts at a deep level of the excavation. These were dated by two dating methods, uranium and crystal. McIntyre had expected a 20,000 year age, but both dating methods gave a much greater age. Rather than deny the facts uncovered, she naively felt the unvarnished evidence should be presented via publication to the scientific world. What followed was that she was fired from her job, the site was closed and then filled in and she has been blacklisted from work in her field.
Commenting on the behavior of the establishment, Cremo and Thompson say of the Steen-McIntyre affair:
'The anomalous findings ... resulted in personal abuse and professional penalties, including withholding of funds and loss of job, facilities and reputation for Virginia Steen McIntyre. Her case opens a rare window into the actual social processes of data suppression in paleoanthropology, processes that involve a great deal of conflict and hurt.
'A final note -- we ourselves once tried to secure permission to reproduce photographs of the Hueyattaco artifacts in a publication. We were informed that permission would be denied if we intended to mention the 'lunatic fringe' date of 250,000 years.' [67]
As reported in The New York Times by John Noble Wilford, Anna C. Roosevelt has found evidence in a cave in Brazil of a people unrelated to the Clovis who were in South America at the same time that the ancestors of the Clovis people settled in the United States. Dr. Betty J. Meggers, an influential archeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has dogmatically and resolutely denied this evidence. Because Dr. Roosevelt is a descendant of President Theodore Roosevelt, she cannot be kicked out of the profession without considerable uproar and deep embarrassment to it. Her work received
'... a scorching review in 1992 in The Journal of Field Archeology [at which] Dr. Meggers complained of its 'polemical tone' and 'extravagant claims.'
'On all sides archeologists are distressed that the conflict between Dr. Roosevelt and Dr. Meggers has descended into a name-calling feud. Dr. Roosevelt has repeatedly charged Dr. Meggers with using her influence to block those who do not share her views from working in the region.' [68]
This is not related only to the early peopling of the Americas but also to the lifestyles of these early people who apparently were not hunters of the megafauna but 'may have consumed more plants, fish and small game than had been assumed. [69] Jeff Hecht of New Scientist, describes Roosevelt's work thus:
'An ancient campsite in a Brazilian cave is forcing anthropologists to rethink their ideas about the history of human settlement in the Americas.
'The traditional views that all native Americans descended from a group called the Clovis people who crossed the Bering Strait some 11,500 years ago ... But an international team headed by Anna Roosevelt of the Field Museum in Chicago has found that people living in the Amazon at about the same time as Clovis culture had a different lifestyle and used quite different tools ...
'... although nobody has found Clovis tools in South America, most early human sites in the continent have been found in the dry or temperate zones that the Clovis people seemed to favour -- leading anthropologists to assume that the first South Americans were from Clovis stock.
'Roosevelt decided to look for human artifacts in tropical rainforests, which Paleo-Indian researchers have rarely explored. After reading 19th century accounts of stone tools and cave paintings in the Amazon, she teamed up with South American anthropologists to locate a cave at Monte Alegre [Brazil], several hundred kilometers from the present mouth of the Amazon which contained a wealth of human artifacts ...
'Evidence of early humans includes rock paintings and debris in 2.5 metres [8 feet] of soil on the floor of the cave. Stone spearheads found in the cave differ from Clovis tools: They are triangular and have backwards-facing barbs ...
'In addition, the researchers excavated wood fragments, charcoal, remains of fruit, nut shells, and the remains of many different animals, including birds, mammals, amphibians, fish and shellfish. The oldest debris dates from 11,145 years ago. Roosevelt says that the remains 'point ... to broad-spectrum foraging,' rather than the hunting associated with Clovis culture.
'Many other specialists had already questioned the traditional view that the earliest Americans were big game hunters. 'They must have been foraging as well,' says John Hoffecker of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. He notes that larger animal bones are preserved better than those of smaller animals, while plant remains rarely survive.' [70]
The evidence thoroughly contradicts the hunting hypothesis on two levels. First, it shows that people were in South America about 350 years after Clovis people supposedly crossed the Bering Strait. One would have expected them to be in South America, at the very least, 1,000 years later. If they descended from Clovis people, why didn't they use the same tools? After all, Clovis tools did not change greatly while they inhabited North America. This suggests these Amazonians were not descendants of the Clovis.
The reasons, therefore, for the behavior of those who oppose Roosevelt's research, especially those who support the hunting hypothesis, is understandable. Roosevelt's research is destroying their life's work and they simply don't know how to get rid of her without showing the world that their science is not science but institutionalized dogma.
Not only does Dr. Roosevelt's work show that Amerindians were not extensively big-game hunters, but after a half century of obstruction, the 12,000 year wall is beginning to crumble. As reported by John Noble Wilford, Monte Verde was occupied by man at least 13,000 years ago! [71] This will lead, I believe, to finally destroying the Clovis Police's mandate and in a few years, the admission will be made that man was in America long before the blitzkrieg hunting theory allows and will deeply undercut it and kill it. According to the report, the people at Monte Verde were also not extensively big-game hunters.
'... a group of 20 to 30 people occupied Monte Verde for a year or so. They lived in shelters covered in animal hides. They gathered berries in spring, chestnuts in fall, and also ate potatoes, mushrooms, and marsh grasses. They hunted small game, and also ancestors of the llama, and sometimes went down to the Pacific, 30 miles away, for shellfish. They were hunters and gatherers.' [72]
Ward says, 'The new South American record [from Brazil] shows people living in a jungle region ... subsisting on berries, fruit, and other items, just as many local people today.' [73]
This evidence of the age of the site and the hunter gathering behavior of the people is a second double blow to the hunting hypothesis. First, animals in America coexisted with man long before the extinction occurred. Second, the Indians were not extensively big game hunters. It will be interesting to see what those advocates of the overkill blitzkrieg concept will summon to grab their theory out of the jaws of this evidence. Reputations and the life work of a great many hunter school doyens are on the line.
A perfect example of how control is exerted by a senior researcher in anthropology on a younger is described by Kenneth Good with David Chanoff in their book, Into the Heart. Good, as a Ph.D. candidate, was sent into South American jungles to evaluate his mentor's thesis which was in debate. His mentor, Napoleon Chagnon, had claimed that a tribe of people, the Yanamama, were a wild, uncontrolled, fierce, murdering people. Marvin Harris, of Columbia University, had strongly opposed this concept of people being inherently violent, like the ancient hunters. Good was sent by Chagnon to document evidence that they were indeed killers. What Good discovered was that the evidence would not support Chagnon's thesis and what followed led to a confrontation in which Chagnon suggested that Good get a job doing other work 'Because you're not going to get into any other anthropology department. I'll see to that,' he said. [74]
To combat some of these allegations and many others I have presented above about the outrageous and reckless behavior of scientists, Jo Wodak and David Oldroyd, in a review of Cremo and Thompson's book cited above, claim:
'We concede that the science of paleoanthropology does not have an unblemished record, though that does not mean that it is riddled with fraud. It is true, however, that it is a branch of science that has been characterized by passionate controversies, and it has been peculiarly prone to the effect of the theory-ladenness of observations. It is also subject to large stories ('scenarios') have to be told on the basis of often limited or slender evidence.' [75] [However Schiller admits]
'... reconstructing the history of early man in America is in some respects a more speculative business than it is in Africa, and interpretations are more divergent. Controversies among anthropologists tend to be more numerous, more spirited, and sometimes downright nasty. The opinions expressed about their colleagues by some of the experts I interviewed verged on insult, and differences of opinion are so bitter that there are those who will not sit at the same table with others. It makes for lively, professional meetings.' [76]
Given the prior evidence outlined of behavior that is academically and scientifically indefensible, it is rather clear that even when the actions of senior researchers are exposed, those within the field are constitutionally incapable of facing the facts. If these forms of behavior aren't addressed, then conditions can only become worse and inquisitorial conduct will continue to flourish.
Now all this behavior is not as unusual as it has been made out to be. Most scientists have great trouble dealing with such totalitarian actions and refuse to believe their beloved science is different than that of other human institutions. But these are workers who have never attempted to present evidence that thoroughly contradicts the reigning paradigm. Those who have challenged these deeply held theoretical constructs soon find that they are persona non grata in their field and become the subject of all the mechanisms of coercion, suppression and hostility expressed in politics.
Yet Paul S. Martin, the leading exponent of the overkill hypothesis, still claims, 'If humans lived in the New World more than 12,000 years ago, there would be no secret about it.' [77] How on Earth can one believe that these advocates of the hunting hypothesis believe or care anything about the tenets of good science when one can observe Lycenkoism being carried out in broad daylight and with the scientific press and the popular press being so unwilling to raise a chorus of denunciation to the public regarding these matters? By the lack of clear and forthright denunciation regarding this affront to science and decency the press's lack of vigor becomes a form of tacit collusion.
As anyone with sense can see, science and academia can act just as totalitarian and fascist as any dictatorial institution or regime. The true reason for this type of behavior meted out to Lee and McIntyre and others is that their finds pointed to the concept that man was in America in Mexico and Canada much earlier than accepted and destroyed the theory that man reached the middle Americas only 12,000 years go.
But then in 1961, parts of human skeletons were uncovered in water laid sand in a valley in Alberta, Canada, which geologists claimed were at least 18,000 years old. [78] The bones of an infant of about four months old were found, including parts of the scapula, a collarbone, a fragment of femur, two ribs and two smashed vertebrae. These fossil remains were buried beneath 33 feet of alluvium which had a sheet of glacial till above it on the surface. The only way to interpret this was to suggest the child died and was either buried slowly or rapidly by alluvium. Then the ice sheet advanced and covered over the area with glacial till. The geologist, A. McS. Stalker, gave the date for the fossil as 30,000 to 40,000 years B.P., or perhaps 20,000 years B.P. The point that must be stressed is that 'Each advance [by the ice sheet] is marked by a later of till.' [79] Thus, the burial occurred prior to the last glacial advance.
To get around this impossible situation, the bones were radiocarbon dated to about 4,000 years old. [80] What was omitted about the date offered was that the bones had been kept in preservatives loaded with carbon-14 which would lower the age of the date. Although there are doubts about this date, nearby at a place called Medicine Hat, human stone artifacts were found and they, too, dated from between 17,000 to 20,000 years B.P. Naturally, these artifacts were dismissed as being caused by nature.
L. Krishtalka, a critic of the overkill theory, goes so far as to accuse the proponents of that concept of willfully culling the data.
'Their selective acceptance of only 'good' dates -- those that fit the model (for example, dates of human beings in North America no older than 12,000 yr B.P., and those for mammoths no younger than 10,000 yr B.P.) -- may play fast and loose with the evidence that doesn't fit.' [81]
What all this displays is that evidence is playing less and less of a role in this scientific debate. The tactics involved are clearly aimed at winning by techniques that smack of intimidation and propaganda, the same behavior evidenced by Hrdlicka".
[...]
#historical
Ales rather looks like a cop, no? Those eyes will give me nightmares. Nobody wants that man coming after your job.Dec 16, 2016
Aleš Hrdlička is just one of those psychopathic men who I am glad they emigrated from my homeland. His life success illustrates he fitted to America much better.Dec 16, 2016- Dec 16, 2016
Dated and Tailored accordingly to fit the theoretical facts surrounding a subject, to enable the perpetuation of Hocus Pocus!Dec 17, 2016- phys.org - An ancient mastodon ignited a debate over humans' arrival in North America
"For nearly half a century, schoolchildren have been taught that the first human visitors to the New World belonged to the Clovis culture, known for chipped-stone spear points first discovered in New Mexico.
Archaeologists say these people crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia about 12,000 years ago.
To dispute Clovis-first by a few thousand years was controversial. Some archaeologists had won begrudging acceptance with a few scattered excavations.
But to propose a site more than 100,000 years older was professional suicide. It would undermine the research and reputations of most archaeologists studying the New World.
'If you claim something is that old, you get blasted,' Cerutti said, 'which is why some archaeologists stopped working on sites like this. They didn't want to get blasted.'
The paleontologists tried to find an alternative theory."40w 
Why is it that Scientists previously believed man existed only 75 Million Years ago when he might have adapted to an 200,000 year history.19w
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