Tuesday 28 February 2012

Stone Age Europeans discovered America

New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.
     A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
     The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago - long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago - and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material.
     Read the full story in the Independent here:-http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-evidence-suggests-stone-age-hunters-from-europe-discovered-america-7447152.html

Visit The Stone Age Tools Museum here http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk/

Friday 3 February 2012

Dr. Douglas Bamforth will speak about the Mahaffy Cache, a collection of 83 artifacts discovered in 2008 beneath Patrick Mahaffy's front yard in Boulder, Colo., during a landscaping project. The 13,000-year-old tools were made from raw materials originated from the Uintah Mountains in northeastern Utah to Middle Park in the central Rocky Mountains. Bamforth will present about the discovery, the details of its analysis, and its implications for what we know about the earliest occupants of North America. The free program will be held at the Estes Park Museum, this Saturday, Feb. 4, beginning at 2 p.m. No reservations are necessary.

Read the full story here http://www.eptrail.com/ci_19878522

Visit The Stone Age Tools Museum at http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk/