Some poop in a cave in Oregon has been dated to more than 14,000 years ago and identified as human, adding to other evidence that humans inhabited the Americas before the well-known Clovis people.
Other archaeologists agreed that the findings established more firmly than before the presence of people on the continent at least 1,000 years before the well-known Clovis people, previously thought to be the first Americans. Recent research at sites in Florida and Wisconsin also appears to support the earlier arrivals, and a campsite in Chile indicates migration deep into South America by 14,600 years ago.
What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? What would crumble fastest? From the ruins of ancient civilizations to present day cities devastated by natural disasters, history gives us clues to these questions and many more.
The upshot of Life After People is that, with the exception of some domesticated animals, our planet would be better off without us. Waaaay better off. Like if Mother Nature sat us down for a talk and said, "listen, you're really shitting on the rest of the planet, its residents, its ecosystems, etc. and, by the way, you're killing me slowly and painfully" and the only honorable thing to do would be to jump in a rocketship to colonize Mars or commit mass suicide so everything else could live in peace.
The other interesting thing about the show is how little is left of humans after a few thousand years of absence. Roads, buildings, cars, bridges; they all break down. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Great Pyramid at Giza might still be around in another ten thousand years, but it may be covered in sand. The Great Wall of China and Hoover Dam could survive for awhile longer. Mount Rushmore, caved out of solid granite, may last for 200,000 years or more. They didn't mention anything about cut & diamonds or objects made from platimun or titanium, but I imagine that they would last millions of years, if not practically forever.
Which leads you to wonder: if the Earth supported an advanced civilization that died out over 500,000 years ago, would we have any way of knowing they even existed? Small cut gemstones and platinum artifacts left behind by such a civilization would be difficult to discover unless they were of sufficient size. Fossils would certainly survive in some form and we could perhaps make some guesses as to their intelligence based on morphology. Would that be enough to detect them?
Update: Two other possible advanced civilization detectors: chemical and geological changes caused might show up in mineral layers and long-lasting nuclear waste. (thx, jordan & leonard)
The top 10 archeological discoveries of 2007 as determined by Archaeology Magazine. Among the discoveries are a cuneiform tablet naming someone who is also named in the Bible, more evidence that Polynesians visited the Americas before the Europeans "discovered" it, early agriculture in Peru, and early urbanization in Syria that followed a different model than other early cities.
Tell Brak seems to have grown from the outside in. In the south, cities began as a central settlement -- under a single authority -- that grew outward. But Ur's field survey shows that Tell Brak started as a central community ringed by smaller satellite settlements that expanded inward. "There isn't a very tight control over these surrounding villages, at least at this beginning period," says Ur. "So the assumption that we're making is that people were coming in under their own volition."
BLDGBLOG has a fantastic post on the interconnected mountain fortifications used by the Austrians and Italians in World War One. If you thought the Maginot Line was insane, wait until you see this. Geoff Manaugh's write-up is as smart as the mountain trenches were crazy:
...the idea of the Alps being riddled with manmade caves and passages, with bunkers and tunnels, bristling with military architecture, even self-connected peak to peak by fortified bridges, the Great Moutain Wall of Northern Italy, architecture literally become mountainous, piled higher and higher upon itself forming new artificial peaks looking down on the fields and cities of Europe, that just fascinates me—not to mention the idea that you could travel up, and thus go futher into history, discovering that the past has been buried above you, the geography of time topologically inverted.
Also: great to see that BLDGBLOG has a book coming out—not so great that we have to wait until 2009.
(via Cosma Shalizi)
Old chicken bones are a clue that the Polynesians made it to the Americas before the Europeans did. "The 50 chicken bones from at least five individual birds date from between 1321 and 1407 -- 100 years or more before the arrival of Europeans."
Thoughtful post on the extreme recency of recorded human history. We know very little about the people who lived before the invention of writing and collections of stories like the Bible, save for what we can glean from speechless skeletons, footprints, and other remains. "And look at how much is lost. Between the time of the couple fleeing across a field of volcanic ash and poor dead Lucy lies 400,000 years. If a Bible is a record of the struggle of a people for 2,000 years, we'd need 200 Bibles to tell us the tale of just this one obscure, remote branch of our lineage." (thx, alexander)
Some recent rigorous radiocarbon dating has thrown into doubt the theory that the Americas were first settled 11,000 years ago by the so-called Clovis peoples.
There's not enough information in this National Geographic story to figure out if the recent finds in Peru has anything to do with the Norte Chico civilization or not. "We found some old stuff somewhere in Peru"...thanks guys, let us know when you starting writing science news for the post-kindergarten crowd. Here's a bit more info on the discovery (still no connection to Norte Chico).
Watched America's Stone Age Explorers on PBS this evening, a summary of recent findings about who the first Americans were, where they came from, and when they arrived. Recent genetic and archeological evidence suggests they arrived earlier than generally accepted and may have originated from Europe rather than Asia.
Recently discovered human remains suggest that metrosexuals lived in Iron Age Ireland. One man's fingernails were manicured and his hands indicated he'd never done manual labor while the other wore hair gel imported from France and Spain. No word on if they wore their shirts tucked or untucked.
An oddly shaped hill in Bosnia is a 10,000 year old pyramid, says Bosnian archeologist Semir Osmanagic. "The pyramid is 100 metres high and there is evidence that it contains rooms and a monumental causeway... The plateau is built of stone blocks, which indicates the presence at the time of a highly developed civilisation."
4000 year-old pot of noodles found in China, settling (for now) the "hotly contested" question of who invented the noodle.
Further discovery of Homo floresiensis bones have strengthened researchers' argument that the so-called Hobbit is a new and distinct human species. More on Flores man at Nature, which is doing a weekly podcast now.
Evolution shocker! The discovery of a dinosaur footprint on the wall of a contemporary Brooklyn school proves that the earth is less than 6000 years old (and, perhaps, that dinosaurs could walk vertically). No word on the Flying Spaghetti Monster's involvement.
Robotics research suggests that Lucy walked upright like humans. Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, is a 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton.
40,000 year-old human footprints found in Mexico. Humans are thought to have come to the Americas only 11,000 years ago.
Jared Diamond calls agriculture "the worst mistake in the history of the human race". "With the advent of agriculture [the] elite became better off, but most people became worse off".
