Oldest American artefact unearthed

Oregon caves yield evidence of continent's first inhabitants. Published online 5 November 2009 Nature doi:10.1038/news.2009.1058 Rex Dalton This article is interesting for a couple of reasons, including that it totally ignores all archaeological evidence of human occupation produced from the eastern part of the United States that may date back as far as 50,000 years ago! I found the comments much more interesting than the article. People who have kept up with this never-ending debate may recognize some of the names of the posters: "The only other American archaeological site older than Clovis is at Monte Verde in Chile"? WHAT??? Topper. Meadowcroft. Cactus Hill. With all due respect, does EVERY site have to have a score or two American archeologists arrive to vet every single pre-Clovis site? THE CLOVIS BARRIER IS BROKEN. Why do the panicked Clovis get to be the arbiters of every site? They are clinging to an antiquated paradigm. Isn't it about time that we can read an article about an early site without having to fluff up the article with ten paragraphs dictated by the people that won't give up their defeated concept? Nature only embarrasses itself by allowing these people to dominate the discussion. Please, editors: Can't we just have an article that simply states – like in Europe or Africa or Asia – that a site is the oldest, without dragging in outdated and refuted concepts? I don't see any flat-earth people being referenced anywhere in your magazine. Why do these folks get special editorial air space? Could it be that they are grandfathered in and the magazine doesn't know how to get rid of them? And the writer should have at the very least mentioned some of those OTHER "pre-Clovis" (please let's get rid of that term!) sites as having very strong evidence to pre-date Clovis. If Clovis is going to be mentioned, then submitting that Monte Verde is the only other "pre-Clovis site in the Americas" is not only misleading, but all but an outright in error – not to mention misleading (intentionally so? and if so, WHY???). This PRO-Clovis attitude just oozes out of this article in almost every paragraph, and is completely embarrassing for your magazine. Please, if the Clovis clingers insist on hanging on to that concept, the magazine doesn't. 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Stephen Garcia I could not agree more with Stephen Garcia's comment. The Clovis first notion is old news! Isn't about time that scientists such as Dr. Tom Dillehay received their just dues. Dr. Dillehay has been advocating a human presence in the Americas for a number of years now. Dr. Dillehay has found what he believes are human artifacts extending back as long ago as 32,000 BP. This also calls into question (and I hope puts to rest) the idea that early humans had much to do with animal extictions here in the Americas. Please see http//www.bcclimate.com 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Rodney Chilton It would have been interesting to read about how it was determined that the object is a scraping tool. Was it studied closely for wear patterns? Does it compare to other bone tools found in other sites? I'm sure the researchers did all that but it is not communicated in the article. The object's definition as a "tool" is an accepted conclusion by the author. 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Bruce Terrell Garcia and Chilton echo the comment you chose to pass on. NATURE's/Dalton's pro-Clovis stance is so thoroughly outdate and probably due to simple laziness or even feckless attitude toward the very important question of who were the First Americans? Next time, get somebody with at least a freshman's level education on the matter.NATURE can do better. 06 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Chris Hardaker While I agree with Chris Hardacker whole heartedly in his postion, I think that Nature's stance on some topics is fat too conservative. this in fact is the attitude shared by most Scientific journals. I even will go so far as to say such conservatism borders on dogma that perhaps even rivals religious dogma. I have found this to be the case in another topic area, and that is comet bombardments of our planet since the Last Ice Age. 07 Nov, 2009 Posted by: Rodney Chilton