OLDEST KNOWN PROJECTILE POINTS UNCOVERED IN THE AMERICAS

[Judi Lynn]

Image Credit : Oregon State University

ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM THE OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY HAVE UNCOVERED A COLLECTION OF PROJECTILE POINTS THAT DATE FROM ROUGHLY 15,700 YEARS AGO.

The researchers found 13 full and numerous fragmentary projectile points at the Cooper’s Ferry site along the Salmon River in present-day Idaho. They are 2,300 years older than the points previously found at the same site, and 3,000 years older than the Clovis fluted points found throughout North America.

The Salmon River site is on traditional Nez Perce land, known to the tribe as the ancient village of Nipéhe. The land is currently held in public ownership by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The points are revelatory not just in their age, but in their similarity to projectile points found in Hokkaido, Japan, dating to 16,000-20,000 years ago. Their presence in Idaho adds more detail to the hypothesis that there are early genetic and cultural connections between the ice age peoples of Northeast Asia and North America.

Loren Davis, an anthropology professor at OSU said: “The earliest peoples of North America possessed cultural knowledge that they used to survive and thrive over time. Some of this knowledge can be seen in the way people made stone tools, such as the projectile points found at the Cooper’s Ferry site.”

. . .



More:
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/12/oldest-known-projectile-points-uncovered-in-the-americas/145638

[Roy Rolling]

1. Proves History is Correct

Projectile points don’t kill the earliest peoples of North America, people do. 😂

[twodogsbarking]

3. Maybe they were more civilized then and didn't kill each other.

[certainot]

7. that might be expected. we were already 90% right handed but that did not start

turning men into frightened intolerant murderous certainty addicted authoritarian buttheads (republicans) until population densities increased and humans started repressing sex and developing nature-eliminating religions

[Lucinda]

2. Thank you for the info!

❤️ ✿❧🌿❧✿ ❤️

[liberal N proud]

4. We don't call them arrowheads now?

[wnylib]

6. Arrows are projected by means of a bow.

Darts were projected by an atlatl. Atlatls preceded bows and arrows and were used for projecting darts and spears.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Most of the "arrowheads" found in NA are really spearheads.

We think of metal spearheads being much larger than the shaft of the spear. Stone spear heads were not made this way. Genuine arrowheads are tiny.

Besides, the term "projectile" makes no assumption about whether the point was fitted to a spear, javelin, dart, or arrow.

[mdelaguna]

5. Questionable though. See this counterargument..

The points show much variation in form which is not the usual case for a contemporary collection. They also resemble styles known later. Wondering about this, I searched and found this article, by a well respected author. Stay tuned.
https://inference-review.com/letter/coopers-ferry-revisited

[bluedigger]

8. I knew and worked with Stuart.

He's no slouch. 👍

[wnylib]

10. Thanks for the alternative view.

First, my apologies for a long post on this, but your link triggered my long interest in early settlements of the Americas.

The letter to the editor in your link cites Japanese archaeologist Nakazawa on possible layer intrusions by rodents making the 16,000 BP questionable. He could be right about that but there's a much larger picture than the letter in the link depicts.

I've been interested in a Pacific route to the Americas ever since James Adovasio's excavation of the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in PA found dates of 14,000 BP and earlier. He faced the same scrutiny and objections about dates and layer contamination, but his dates have held up over the years.

More interesting to me is a discussion that I had years ago with Adovasio's staff about a Pacific migration route and possible maritime and land culture along the Pacific Rim from Japan through Beringia to North America. So I checked some info from the link in your post.

I'm not able to agree or disagree with objections on the dates. But I remember Adovasio's experience. The letter says the earliest possible date is 14,600 BP based on fire evidence at the Cooper's Ferry site, which is not yet proven to be human made. That is still a pre Clovis date which opens up the larger and more significant picture (IMO) of a Pacific route, which gets to the next point in the letter about Japan being the source for similarities in the stone point technology at Cooper's Ferry.

The letter identifies the Cooper's Ferry points as part of the Western Stemmed Point technology dated to 11,000 BP at other sites. But there are older sites that are part of the Western Stemmed Point technology and others very similar to it along the Pacific Rim and even as far south as Chile.

The letter says that the Japanese stemmed points date to 13,000 BP so if the Cooper's Point dates of 16,000 BP and 14,600 BP are correct, the technology for the Cooper's Ferry points could not have come from Japan. The letter also says that it is very unlikely that the Japanese technology later spread all the way to North America once it did develop. So it says that the similarity of technology is due to coincidental development in both places.

But the timeline for Beringia and two DNA haplogroups show that an indirect technology exchange was possible. I am NOT saying that it did happen, only that it is possible. People were in Beringia 25,000 years ago. The Pacific Coast of North America was ice free by 16,000 to 18,000 years ago, much earlier than the ice free land route of 11,000 years ago.

There is DNA evidence in 2 haplogroups of back migration from America to Asia. One of them is in the 13,000 BP to 10,000 BP timing for technology exchange between Asia and northwestern North America. The direction of migration is wrong for carrying technology from Asia to North America, but it does demonstrate continued contact between the two continents via Beringia.

Here's a map of back migrations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia

Here's an article about Western Stemmed Point technology similarities from Asia to South America that supports a possible Pacific migration route and stone point technology techniques from Japan to South America. It does not prove that that's what happened, but it does make it look more probable.

https://www.science.org/content/article/spear-tips-point-path-first-americans