What to expect this month:

Well… I’m back! After a good break from posting on social media and YouTube I feel refreshed and excited to get back into the groove of things. Being my first video back, I don’t want to bore you with a lengthy intro. Click the link below to see what took me so long!

(Spoiler: this video took me a lot longer to create than most)

This is how it’s going to be from now on. After posting weekly for the past few months, my research, writing, and video-producing skills have gotten much better, and I want to put them to use! In doing so, I have to sacrifice frequency for quality. Expect videos monthly from now on!

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The OLDEST Archaeological Sites In North America

Imagine a world before recorded history - a time when mammoths roamed the plains and ancient humans were just beginning to explore new frontiers. Long before Columbus, long before the Clovis people, there were pioneers whose stories are only now being uncovered. Join me as I step back in time to reveal the secrets of North America's oldest and most controversial archaeological sites, where each discovery rewrites our understanding of human history.

I’m going to walk you through the 5 oldest archaeological sites we know of located on the North American continent. Things get more controversial as we move back in our timeline, from Meadowcroft Rockshelter to the Cerutti Mastodon site. In the world of archaeology, just like any other discipline, there are those who are biased toward the status quo and will seek to uphold conventional explanations even in the face of new evidence. On the other hand, some people too quickly latch on to the newest exciting trend, despite insufficient evidence. 

Regardless of what side you’re on, we must share, communicate, and debate all ideas - even the most contentious ones. Part of the controversy behind some of the forthcoming sites is due to the once long-held belief that the Clovis culture represents the first people to reach the New World. We now have evidence that they were not, with some of these sites being significantly older than any known Clovis site. By significant I mean a difference of almost 110,000 years in one case.

So let’s begin with a brief overview of who these Clovis people were and when they appear in the archaeological record of North America.  

Clovis First

The Clovis first model is the conventional belief that groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers, predominantly known by their stone tool technology, were the initial inhabitants of the Americas. The only evidence we have of these people (besides one example of human remains) stems from the numerous artifacts they left behind, so let’s explore this once-advanced technology. 

They crafted various kinds of stone scrappers and hammers, in addition to awls and needles made from bone. Named after Clovis, New Mexico, where the first of its kind was discovered, the Clovis projectile point was a staple of these ancient Americans’ toolkits. 

Crafted from a variety of fine-grained stones such as obsidian, chert, or chalcedony, these points are unique to the American continent. Not found anywhere else on Earth, they are identifiable by their shape. At the base of both sides of the point is a flute, or a depressed channel that runs up toward the tip. This fluted end would have accommodated hafting the point to a wooden shaft, creating a hand-thrown or atlatl-thrown spear. 

Many Clovis sites include the remains of the Megafauna that once lived in North America, including mammoths, mastodons, and long-horned bison [1]. Often, these remains are found with Clovis points still impaled into their ribs or other bones, suggesting that these Paleoindians were hunting large game. However, a recent study has thrown some doubt on the efficacy of Clovis points for taking down large prey like wooly mammoths [2]. The truth is, we may never know the true relationship between the Clovis people and the megafauna they shared the continent with.

Regardless, we can’t directly date how old these stone tools are, but we can date the organic materials found in association with them. Radiocarbon dates of bone and charcoal located near Clovis points stratigraphically suggest that these people appeared in North America around 13,050 years ago and disappeared 12,750 years ago [3]. 

How they got there is also debated, with some people hypothesizing a coastal route, and others suggesting they took a route further inland through an ice-free corridor [4]. Both hypotheses are plausible, and it's not impossible for there to have been multiple phases of migration, with some groups traveling along the coast and others navigating between glaciers. 

For many years, it was widely accepted that these were the original inhabitants of North America. Without leaving much more evidence than their projectile points, we can do little but hypothesize about their lives and how they got there. But, starting around the 1970’s, archaeological excavations began to shed light on even earlier inhabitants of these lands. The first of these sites I’ll discuss comes from the Eastern United States.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter

What if I told you that there is something inherently special about the land you live on? And I don’t mean your country. I quite literally mean your property - the plot of land on which you currently reside. Maybe, choosing to live there was more of a subconscious decision than a conscious one. Maybe the land spoke to your subconscious, informing you of the value it encompasses.

What’s beautiful about doing archaeology in the United States is that you can see how the land spoke to the minds of prehistoric people in similar ways it did to the European colonists. The land’s objective characteristics expose some universal features of the human mind - features that cross cultural boundaries. For example, the settlement patterns of early colonists were not unlike those of the indigenous Lenape people who they encountered. 

“Those areas attractive to the Lenape because of their natural features were equally attractive to the early settlers and to later inhabitants as well, and for precisely the same reasons” [5].

Meadowcroft Rockshelter is our first site to discuss and is a great example of how disparate cultures can find common ground, no pun intended. The site is located in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, about 48 km southwest of modern-day Pittsburgh. It sits on the bank of a small tributary of the Ohio River called Cross Creek. About 15 meters above the creek, it provides easy access to the fauna and resources associated with the waterway but is largely unaffected by heavy flooding. Its rock overhang protrudes 13 meters above the site’s ground surface.

Originally, it was recognized as a historical site associated with a 19th-century rural community. This changed dramatically when Albert Miller stumbled upon stone artifacts that surfaced from a badger burrowing into the ground [6]. James Adovasio, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh eventually caught wind of what Miller discovered and archaeological excavations were soon underway.

Over multiple phases of excavation in the 1970s and the decades following, Adavasio’s team of archaeologists and geologists uncovered onion layers of human occupation, including some of the oldest cultural material to be discovered in North America. In addition to the known historical farmstead that sat adjacent to their digging location, multiple periods of prehistoric occupation were identified.

The chronology of Native American prehistory is roughly broken up into three cultural periods. The oldest is known as the Paleoindian period, which dates from around 13,000 to 9,500 years ago and includes the Clovis culture. Next, from 9,500 to around 3,000 years ago lived the Archaic traditions. These people are marked by new stone tool technologies like notched and stemmed points, as well as grinding stones for seeds and nuts. Then, from 3,000 to 1,000 years ago lived the Woodland traditions. The cultures of the Woodland period began incorporating agriculture. They also started producing ceramic pottery and small, refined arrowheads for their bows and arrows.

All three periods are present at Meadowcroft Rockshelter. Adovasio and colleagues have identified 11 stratigraphic layers, including 10 strata with cultural habitation [6]. Stratum I is what they believe to be sterile subsoil consisting of decomposed sandstone and no cultural material. Stratum II is separated into IIa (the lower portion) and IIb (the upper portion). Stratum IIa consists of the oldest cultural material, reminiscent of Paleoindian stone tools. That’s overlaid by Strata IIb and III, which they attribute to the Archaic tradition. Finally, evidence of Woodland occupation was encountered in Strata IV through XI.

So, within this one site, we can see intermittent bouts of land usage over thousands of years by culturally distinct people. The deepest, oldest Stratum, IIa, is the layer that’s of particular interest. The one complete stone tool found here did not resemble the Clovis points that we presume would underlie the Archaic artifacts. Instead, it lacks the fluted base entirely and has been given its own typological name - Miller Lanceolate projectile point, named after Albert Miller [7]. Researchers suggest that this projectile point represents a pre-Clovis point - possibly an earlier iteration or prototype.

So when does this pre-Clovis site date to? Discrepancies and debates arose amid the initial excavations, but the conservative estimates of the deepest radiocarbon samples average to around 14,000 years ago - 500 years before the appearance of the Clovis culture [7]. However, the earliest radiocarbon samples date as far back as 16,770 years ago.

Despite early criticisms, Meadowcroft Rockshelter is now widely regarded as a pre-Clovis archaeological site. To conclude, here is a quote by James Adovasio and his colleagues [7]:

“Although the incipient occupation of the site has, understandably but perhaps unfortunately, captured the spotlight. The lion's share of the site's unquestioned deposits are an eloquent testimonial to thousands of years of subsequent human cultural adaptation. If the site accomplishes no more than to draw increased attention to this sometimes subtle, sometimes radically shifting relationship among humans, their technology, and the conditions of their natural environment, it will be enough.”

Up next is a site that has only recently been discovered and pushes human migrations into North America almost twice as far back.

White Sands National Park

Not everything is preserved under the ground equally well. Some things have a faster rate of decay while some soil conditions are better suited for preventing that decay. For example, very saturated soils, such as those found in bog-like environments, promote the preservation of organic material by reducing exposure to oxygen. This keeps microorganisms from decomposing that organic material.

Quick changes in soil composition can also affect preservation. The more rapidly something is buried, the more likely it is to remain unchanged under the ground. In the case of White Sands, it was a change in saturation that solidified the presence of humans around 22,000 years ago.

White Sands is a National Park in New Mexico, just 100 km north of the Mexican border. Today, the site is hot, dry, and covered in wind-blown sand dunes that extend to the horizon line. However, this isn’t what it always looked like. Before 12,000 years ago, White Sands was much wetter. It was once a lake, called Lake Otero, with “grasslands stretching for miles that would have looked more like the prairies of the Midwest rather than New Mexico’s deserts” [8, NPS]. 

With such wet conditions, the soil in and around the lake would have been malleable and easily molded by the animal life walking through it. At this time, North America was home to various megafauna. These now-extinct species were massive, often blown-up versions of extant species today. The wooly mammoth is the typical example, but there were also giant ground sloths and ancient camels. These giants left their footprints in the wetlands of Lake Otero, which fossilized after the climate quickly dried and the moisture escaped the ground.

But these megafauna footprints aren’t alone. They’re accompanied by human footprints. Human footprints can be found right beside those of extinct animals. In one case, human footprints were found directly inside those of a ground sloth. One can imagine a young child following these huge impressions, or an adult using them for navigation during a hunting pursuit.

We already knew that the earliest humans in North America lived among giants. Clovis sites often include megafaunal remains. What we didn’t know was how old this relationship was. Although these coexisting footprints are an exceptional find, their age stole the spotlight.

You can’t date the footprints themselves. Just like at Meadowcroft Rockshelter, the researchers had to date the organic material around the main findings. Luckily, Lake Otero left behind aquatic plant remains. Archaeologists have found Ruppia cirrhosa seeds above and below the footprints. This conveniently brackets the prints, giving you dates to before they were laid down (the lower seeds) and after (the upper seeds).

Two separate studies have now radiocarbon dated the lower, older seeds to roughly 23,000 years ago, and the upper more recent seeds to roughly 21,000 years ago [9;10]. This puts the age of the footprints somewhere between these two dates, around 22,000 years ago.

To propose such antiquity just a few decades ago would have been met with controversy and dismissal. However, the mainstream consensus has gradually been coming around to the notion that there were people in North America before Clovis. The footprints are some of the only evidence we have of those very people. 

If they arrived from Eurasia, whether along the coast or further inland, having a date this old in New Mexico suggests that these people made it to Northwestern portions of the continent hundreds or thousands of years earlier. So let’s head to Canada, where archaeologists have uncovered possible evidence of these earlier migrations. 

Bluefish Caves

Part of the difficulty in explaining how people made it to North America is due to a massive ecological barrier that would have been problematic for migrations: the Ice Age. The Last Glacial Maximum lasted from about 24,000 to 19,000 years ago. Defined by cold temperatures and massive ice sheets covering much of the northern hemisphere, it would have been nearly impossible to cross from Eurasia into America via the land.

After 19,000 years ago, the climate gradually started warming back up and some of the ice began to melt. The Lorentide Ice Sheet to the east and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet to the west began to recede and an ice-free corridor between the two emerged. As mentioned earlier this is the primary explanation for how the Clovis people got to North America - they waited for the ice to melt. The fact that we have evidence of people in America before these ice sheets receded challenges that idea. Our next site, Blue Fish Caves, supports a new hypothesis: that populations of people were living in North America before the opening of this ice-free corridor.

Jacques Cinq-Mars, a Canadian archaeologist, excavated Bluefish Caves from 1977 to 1987. This site is nested in the mountains of the Canadian Yukon, near the Alaskan border. This area of the world gets brutally cold in the winter, sometimes reaching -60 degrees Celsius. However, the excavations at bluefish caves suggest that people were living there at a time when it was essentially winter year-round - during the last Ice Age. 

While there is a collection of small stone tools, like microblades, that came from Blue Fish Caves, the primary archaeological focus has been on the faunal assemblage. A diverse range of animal remains were found here, including caribou, mammoth, bison, and even horses. Initial analyses of these bones suggested that they date to around 24,000 years ago [11]. For those in the 1980s and 1990s who disputed the 16,000-year-old Meadowcroft Rockshelter, a date this old would have been met with complete disregard. 

Luckily, research on the site has continued. A study published in 2017 reexamined some of this bone material [12]. The researchers investigated a total of 36,000 mammal bones associated with these caves. Not all of which were associated with human modification. Based on certain characteristics, they determined that only fifteen of these bones clearly depicted marks created by humans. Another twenty, they say, have markings indicative of “probable” human modification. 

But what are some characteristics used to determine if a cut mark was made by humans using things like stone tools or by natural causes like a predator simply having their way with their prey? Here are a few of the criteria used by the researchers.

1. Shape: cut marks made with stone tools are usually V-shaped (narrow \/ or wide \_/) while carnivore tooth marks or even metal tools will produce grooves with more parallel walls (U or |_|)

2. Trajectory: cut marks are commonly straight but can sometimes be curved; they are rarely sinuous, as in the case of trampling or root etching.

3. Number of striae, size and overlapping: butchering activities can produce multiple striae that should be parallel in orientation and roughly the same size.

4. Anatomical location and orientation: the anatomical location and orientation of cultural bone modifications must be consistent with the marks produced by specific butchery tasks… marks produced by natural processes, however, will not reflect any predetermined intention.

So, between 15 and 35 samples of this bone assemblage contained markings that align with one or more of these criteria, suggesting cultural modification by prehistoric humans. Radiocarbon dates were then extracted from six of these bones. Not all of the dates were mind-blowingly ancient. Some bones dated to around 15,000 years ago. However, one horse bone in particular was much older than the rest. 

A horse jaw fragment was found in one of the lower soil layers. It was weathered by natural causes but retained cut markings by humans. According to the researchers, the cuts are “located on the medial side, under the third and second molars, and are associated with the removal of the tongue using a stone tool” [12]. This bone produced the oldest radiocarbon dates, coming in at 24,000 years ago.

Like so many archaeological sites, no actual people were found. All we have is the cultural material they left behind. What interpretations can we extract from said cultural material? Aside from the deep antiquity of human presence in North America, the researchers of this study suggest that Blue Fish Caves supports the “Standstill Hypothesis.” 

The Standstill Hypothesis “proposes that a genetically isolated human population persisted in Beringia [the land between Eurasia and North America] during the LGM and dispersed from there to North and South America during the post-LGM period.” This population would have been relatively small, measuring a few thousand individuals, and they would have expanded south once the ice-free corridor opened. 

But this would fail to explain things like the White Sands footprints, which are only about one or two thousand years younger than the Blue Fish Cave findings and would have been made during the last glacial maximum. Maybe the people of White Sands didn’t come from the ice-free corridor; maybe they took the coastal route. Or, maybe they made it to North America entirely before the last glacial maximum. 

Our next site, while controversial, suggests that people were in fact living in North America before the Last Glacial Maximum… about 25,000 years before.

Topper Site

The mining operations conducted around the world today are enormous. The excavating machines often weigh dozens of tons and the quarries themselves can be kilometers wide. Salt, iron, sand, and oil are just some of the materials we extract from the earth and use to create countless products. With a population of more than 8 billion people, the demand for raw materials is higher than ever. 

Rewind 5, 10, or 15 thousand years ago, people still needed the raw materials to craft the tools necessary for survival - albeit at a much smaller scale. Various quarries have been discovered across North America which are attributable to the continent's prehistoric inhabitants. Modern-day archaeologists working at these sites are quite literally excavating prehistoric excavations and stone was their gold.

Stone was a fundamental material to the prehistoric tool kit. Indigenous Americans would have refined the art of identifying which stone types were most effective for tool manufacturing. 

“Paleo-Indians were vitally dependent upon their tools and weapons, and preferred to use only the finest quality lithics available: stone carefully selected for fine color, translucency, smooth texture, and other aesthetic and functional qualities,” says archaeologist Hebert C. Kraft [13].

Some of the most common types of stone used were chert, quartz, and quartzite. However, knowing what type of stone to use is not enough. You must know where to find it. When an outcrop of valuable stone was discovered, it would quickly or eventually become a quarry for local or migrating people. 

This is exactly what the Topper Site is. Located along the Savannah River near the border between Georgia and South Carolina, Topper has been undergoing archaeological investigations since the 1980s. Albert C. Goodyear III has been the lead archaeologist for the duration of these investigations and he’s made some very bold claims. He suggests that his quarry site not only contains Clovis and pre-Clovis occupation layers but that some of the pre-Clovis cultural material might be as old as 50,000 years ago [14]. 

Topper was used as a chert quarry by various native groups over thousands of years. This is clear by the abundance of raw chert and the various stone manufacturing and procurement tools left behind by past inhabitants. Importantly, Goodyear devised a multidisciplinary team, consisting of archaeologists and a variety of soil scientists and geologists to study this quarry. 

There are essentially three geochronological soil layers within the Topper site, and the uppermost layer contains evidence of Clovis, Archaic, and Woodland-era cultural material. The soil in which these upper materials were discovered is the youngest of the three, likely deposited after the Last Glacial Maximum, during the Holocene. This aligns with the general chronology of when the Clovis people first appeared. 

Underlying this is a layer of alluvial sands, which is sand that’s been deposited by running water in a stream bed or on a floodplain. The geologists on site have made the argument that water running through the Savannah River during the last ice age is what brought this sand to Topper. As a result, they date this layer to between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago. This is where the pre-Clovis assemblage begins. 

The stone artifacts that came out of this layer are mostly either unfinished tools that were abandoned mid-production, or what archaeologists call debitage - the unused by-products, like flakes, that result from working stone. Partly what makes this assemblage interesting is the method of stone tool manufacture that was used.

As opposed to the typical flint knapping used by Clovis and later peoples, whereby one rock is used to strike another and chip flakes off of the latter, these artifacts are indicative of bend-break technology. This technique involves bending a stone core to create fractures, which can then be further shaped into tools. 

However, the most interesting artifact discovered at Topper is what Goodyear calls “Big Red”. Big Red is a large chert core with clear evidence of percussion marks made by people. Not only can you see where excess material was intentionally detached from the core but also repeated percussion marks focused on specific areas, suggesting that the individual had difficulty fracturing the stone. One can imagine the frustration of a prehistoric individual rising as they simply can’t get a clean break. 

Big Red was found below the alluvial layer of the previously mentioned pre-Clovis artifacts. Known as the Pleistocene terrace, the soil that defines this layer was deposited prior to the ice age. Radiocarbon dates of 50,000 years ago from charcoal remains have confirmed this and Big Red was found just adjacent to that charcoal [15]. 

If this site is accurately dated, then it completely rewrites our understanding of human migrations out of the old world. We know that people made it to Australia by at least 40,000 years ago, but to say that North America was home to human populations 50,000 years ago is an extraordinary claim. That being said our next and final site not only has drastic implications for the peopling of the Americas, but for human evolution as a whole.

Cerutti Mastodon Site

When most people hear “archaeology”, it elicits images of Indiana Jones fighting bad guys and searching endlessly for lost treasures. These images, exciting as they may be, couldn’t be further from the truth. The early days of archaeology may have resembled such imagery more than the field today, but the days of 19th-century adventurers scouring the globe in search of valuable antiquities are largely over.

Conducting archaeology in the year 2024 often fails to embody the romanticized visions of cutting your way through jungles, running from territorial natives, and finding ancient spellbound artifacts made of gold. Having dug plenty of holes in and around the North Eastern United States, I can attest to this. In fact, the vast majority of “real life” archaeology does not reflect this media-portrayed narrative at all. Avoiding deer ticks, poison ivy, and extremes in weather is about the extent of our chaos.

Most of the archaeology performed today would be considered salvage archaeology, meaning that an identified or potential historic or prehistoric resource is under the threat of destruction. Rather than proactively hunting down artifacts, archaeologists often conduct excavations prior to construction projects or they monitor the project as it progresses to mitigate any adverse effects to these resources. 

This form of archaeology is only becoming more important as our modern world is becoming more urbanized and industrialized. Massive warehouses are being built on lands inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years. Large infrastructure projects, like interstate highways, are being laid atop the remains of some of America’s earliest European settlers. Without proper archaeological investigations, this history will be lost forever.

The construction of one highway in particular may have uncovered the oldest archaeological site to be discovered in North America. In 1992, Route 54 in San Diego, California was being built when the construction crew came across the bones of a mastodon - a mammoth-like mammal that lived in North America before and during the last ice age. Luckily, archaeologists and paleontologists were monitoring the work and were able to salvage and document the discovery. 

Known as the Cerutti Mastodon site, named after the monitor who found it, Richard Cerutti, it consists of fragmented mastodon bones and teeth - including a tusk suspiciously oriented vertically in the ground [16]. These remains have been dated accurately to 130,000 years ago. The age of these bones is generally not disputed. It’s how they broke that’s controversial.

Alongside these remains was evidence of human activity, such as the “5 large stones that appeared to have been used as hammers and anvils” [17]. Is there a link between the broken bones and stone tools? The scientists studying this site say yes. 

In 2017, the official study looking into this connection was published in the journal Nature, one of the most prestigious academic journals [18]. The researchers argue that the percussion marks on the stone hammers and anvils were not caused by natural processes. They say:

“Five large cobbles (hammerstones and anvils) in the CM bone bed display use-wear and impact marks, and are hydraulically anomalous relative to the low-energy context of the enclosing sandy silt stratum.” Meaning that within their low-impact geological context, these markings do not occur naturally.

Critics of the site often claim that the bone fractures could have been caused directly by the construction equipment. However, Cerutti and colleagues argue that these breaks most likely occurred around the time the bones were deposited 130,000 years ago based on “spiral fractures” which indicate the “breakage occurred while fresh.”

They sum up their research by saying, “Multiple bone and molar fragments, which show evidence of percussion, together with the presence of an impact notch, and attached and detached cone flakes support the hypothesis that human-induced hammerstone percussion was responsible for the observed breakage.”

If true, what does this site say about the peopling of North America? It suggests that a.) humans left Africa much earlier than the conventional belief of 50-100,000 years ago and b.) Homo sapiens may not have been the first people on the continent. 130,00 years ago, Neanderthals and Denisovans were still wandering the planet. Could one of them beat us Homo sapiens to the Americas? The entire evolutionary trajectory of our species would have to be reinterpreted if North America was inhabited by a non-Homo sapiens species first.

Conclusion

Archaeology connects us to our shared human heritage. It allows us to walk in the footsteps of those who came before us, to see through their eyes, and to understand their stories. As our techniques and technologies evolve, so too does our understanding of these ancient people, continually reshaping the narrative of human history.

But archaeology is not just about the past—it's about our responsibility to preserve and honor these stories for future generations. Each discovery is a reminder of the rich tapestry of human experience, and the importance of protecting these priceless connections to our shared past. For that reason, it’s important we get the story right.

It’s important to reiterate that none of these sites are totally conclusive. Each has its share of critiques and doubters. The earlier sites like Meadowcroft Rockshelter, White Sands, and Bluefish Caves are now becoming more mainstream, but Topper and the Cerutti Mastodon site are still hotly debated. 

In this video, I simply wanted to bring awareness to the fact that science is never settled and that the antiquity of humans in North America may be older than we thought. It is up to each individual to come to their own conclusions by looking at what the evidence has to say. 

Lastly, to play devil’s advocate again, we must acknowledge that the researchers studying these sites are not hobbyists who yearn for controversy and are seeking the limelight. Most of them are hard-working professors and experts in their fields who are trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities and should be taken seriously. 

I had a blast making this longer-form video and hope you guys enjoyed learning about these sites as much as I enjoyed researching them. I definitely feel like I was able to flesh out the ideas a bit more than in my normal videos and up my production quality a little bit for all of you. Expect more videos like this in the future.

References:

[1] Kopper, P. 1986 The Smithsonian Book of North American Indians: Before the Coming of the Europeans. Smithsonian Books: Washington, DC.

[2] Eren, Metin I., et al. 2021. “On the efficacy of Clovis fluted points for hunting proboscideans.” Journal of Archaeological Science 39:1-14.

[3] Waters, M., et al. 2020. “The age of Clovis-13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P.” Science Advances 6(43):eaaz0455.

[4] Pitblado, B.L. 2011. “A Tale of Two Migrations: Reconciling Recent Biological and Archaeological Evidence for the Pleistocene Peopling of the Americas.” Journal of Archaeological Research 19(4):327–375.

[5] Cotter, J., et al. 1994. The Buried Past: An Archaeological History of Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, PA.

[6] Adovasio, J., et al. 1978. “Meadowcroft Rockshelter - Retrospect 1977: Part 1.” North American Archaeologist 1(1):3-44.

[7] Adovasio, J., et al. 1998. “TWO DECADES OF DEBATE ON MEADOWCROFT ROCKSHELTER.” North American Archaeologist 19(4):317-341

[8] National Park Service. 2024. “Fossilized Footprints.” https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature/fossilized-footprints.htm

[9] Bennett, M., et al. 2021. “Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.” Science 373:1528-1531.

[10] Pigati, J., et al. 2023. “Independent age estimates resolve the controversy of ancient human footprints at White Sands.” Science 382:73-75.

[11] Cinq-Mars J. 1990. “La place des grottes du Poisson-Bleu dans le Prehistoire beringienne.” Revista de Arqueologia Americana 1:9-32.

[12] Bourgeon, L., et al. 2017. “Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada.” PLoS One 12(1):e0169486.

[13] Kraft, H. 2001. The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 BS to AD 2000.

Lenape Books.

[14] Goodyear, A. 2009. “Update on Research at the Topper Site.” Legacy 13(1):8-13.

[15] Al Goodyear interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MKyJyNIklg&t=330s

[16] Deméré, T., et al. 1995. “State Route 54 Paleontological Mitigation Program: Final Report.” San Diego Natural History Museum.

[17] San Diego Natural History Museum. “The Cerutti Mastodon Site: One Year Later.” https://www.sdnhm.org/blog/blog_details/the-cerutti-mastodon-site-one-year-later/96/

[18] Holen, S., et al. “A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA.”Nature 544:479–483.

Song Suggestion

Music is a human universal. Its found in every culture, at every corner of the globe. The Evolve.2 song suggestions are hand-picked by yours truly. I love all types of music, but here, I like to share some of my more extreme tastes.

(Caution: These songs consist of heavy, brutal guitar riffs and gruesomely guttural vocals. I timestamp what I believe to be the best riff of the song. You’ve been warned.)