archaeologist Al Goodyear to leave Big Pine Tree site for Topper site.
Caveat: The source is the "alternative newspaper" for the Charleston,
SC area. It is a good "story", well-illustrated, but not written for a
technical audience.
Al Goodyear and the Secrets of the Ancient Americans
USC Professor Discovers 50,000 Year-Old Artifacts in S.C.
by : Ron Aiken
It was the summer of 1998, and University of South Carolina
archaeologist Al Goodyear had a problem on his hands.
Fourteen years of digging at an ancient chert quarry outside Allendale
had begun to bear fruit: At a site called Big Pine Tree, Goodyear was
well on his way to establishing that a substantial Clovis population
lived here. If you’ll recall your history lessons from high school,
the Clovis people — named such because the first evidence of them was
found at a site near Clovis, N.M. — were believed to be the first
Americans who came into the North American continent across the Bering
Sea land bridge from Asia some 13,000 years ago.
A volunteer carefully excavates a portion of the Topper site, being
careful to leave artifacts exactly where they were discovered to
catalog. Photo courtesy of USC
Now, thanks to a flood that had whipped the normally serene Savannah
River into a frenzy, Goodyear had to move his team, filled with
researchers and avid volunteers, away from the dig’s most prosperous
site to a backup location identified years earlier — Topper, named
after local man David Topper who first led Goodyear to the area in
1981.
Goodyear was less than thrilled about the move.
“We honestly had no place else to go,” Goodyear says. “Word was just
beginning to get out about the site, interest was high and now we
couldn’t dig where we wanted.
“Topper, which was higher up, was high and dry and was the only
choice. I remember it broke my heart at the time to leave behind a
site I thought was the best we’d find. I remember thinking ‘OK, I
guess we have to go to Topper.’”
What his team found that year and every year since has made it,
arguably, the most important archaeological site in North America,
with radiocarbon dating verifying human habitation at around 50,000
years ago — the oldest ever found.
And the site isn’t just for archaeologists: It is open for a dig now
through June 7, and volunteers can sign up to help by visiting
allendale-expedition.net. The dig will focus on both the 50,000 year-
old level and a massive new Clovis area discovered in 2004.
Because of Topper and a handful of other sites, in a matter of 10
years everything scholars thought they knew about who the first
Americans were, where they came from and when was wrong. Not just by a
little, but by nearly 40,000 years.
Topper is significant for other reasons, too: Evidence from the site,
published late last year, also supports the idea that a comet exploded
over the Great Lakes 12,900 years ago, scorching the entire Eastern
Seaboard through massive wildfires that would have left Columbia
nothing but ash and cinder and which led to the extinction of the
woolly mammoth and displaced the entire Clovis population.
And the best part?
Topper isn’t anywhere near finished giving up its ancient secrets.
Glossary
Chert: a sedimentary rock that flakes easily and can be worked to
produce tools such as knives, arrows, axes and blades.
Clovis: The common name for a hunting people believed to have come to
America via the Bering Sea land bridge around 13,000 years ago
following large game.
Paleoindian: The name given to ancient Native Americans living roughly
between 16,000 and 10,000 years ago following the end of the last Ice
Age.
Solutrean Theory: A theory that Clovis peoples entered America not
from Siberia but from Europe, making their way along the edge of the
ice sheets chasing marine mammals and fish.
Younger-Dryas: A 1,300-year period beginning approximately 12,900
years ago in which the Northern Hemisphere underwent a dramatic,
unexpected cooling period in which animals larger than 220 pounds
died.
The Gospel of Clovis First
Back at Topper in 1998 — and with time running out on the summer’s dig
— Goodyear had a decision to make. He remembered reading about a pre-
Clovis site in Monte Verde, Chile, the year before in which evidence
was found to substantiate a human presence around 14,500 years ago,
and an odd thought popped in his head.
“I thought if all the experts had agreed on that date and people were
in South America at that time, a thousand miles south and a thousand
years before, how could they have not been here?” Goodyear says. “How
could they miss a 20-million-year-old chert quarry on the Savannah
River, which has always been about the same place it is now and has a
relatively temperate climate like it does now?
“So I talked to my team about the Monte Verde find and asked them if
they wanted to dig deeper than anyone had before in America to see
what’s there. Of course, they don’t have to go to national meetings
and defend results, so they were all like, “Yeah! Let’s do it! We’ll
ruin your career!’
“To most people of my generation, saying you’re searching for
something pre-Clovis is tantamount to saying you’re going looking for
Elvis or E.T. It was that entrenched — it’s what I was taught myself
and what I taught my students to believe. And lo and behold the first
week we start finding artifacts.”
To understand why chert was so crucial to early man is simple: Its
properties enable anyone, with a little training, to fashion razor-
sharp stone blades to be used for axes, knives and arrows that were
critical to human survival. Knives cut through animal skin to make
clothes. Bigger tools are used to cut trees for fire and shelter.
Spears are used to hunt the game they chased, including woolly
mammoths. Smaller blades are used for everything from carving bone to
tattooing flesh.
Simply put, without a chert supply, which is to say without tools,
survival is nearly impossible. That’s what led Goodyear to the
Allendale chert quarry to begin with — there’s just no way ancient
peoples, especially in a warm climate with a river for food and
transportation, could have missed the benefits of living near the
Southeast’s largest exposed chert supply.
The roofed structure protects archaeologists and the dig from the heat
and elements. It was built through donations from Clariant Corp.,
which owns the land, and many others. Clariant also donated the
viewing platform so the public can watch the dig in progress. Photo
courtesy of USC
“That was a big psychological time of change for me, those last few
weeks of 1998,” Goodyear says. “We just kept finding more and more. As
a Clovis-first person myself, I had to re-evaluate what I thought I
knew against what I was holding in my hands. And once you accept that,
all of a sudden everything that came before it is fair game, too.”
Still buzzed from the pre-Clovis Topper findings, Goodyear wrote a
letter, which he had done every year once work was finished, to all
his volunteers thanking them for their efforts and letting them know
what they’d found.
“And all I said to them was that for two weeks we dug deeper and found
something under Clovis,” Goodyear says. “That’s all I said; I didn’t
call up newspapers or anything. I just shared it with them.”
An eager volunteer, aware of research being done in Pennsylvania by
archaeologist James Adovasio, faxed a copy of the letter to him. As
fate would have it, Adovasio happened to be working with U.S. News &
World Report writer Tom Petit for an upcoming cover story, and when
Adovasio shared the information with Petit, the reporter wasted no
time calling Goodyear.
“I told him what we found, and next thing I know we’re splashed all
through the article,” Goodyear says. “Topper wasn’t a secret anymore.”
Dating the Evidence
Despite the growing evidence of artifacts, Goodyear knew if he was
ever going to mollify critics, he needed precise dates no one could
argue with. In 2000, Goodyear welcomed scientists from across the
country to come and collect radiocarbon samples for dating as well as
a geochronologist who specialized in using optically stimulated
luminescence (OSL) methods to date the soil itself. Their research
confirmed the first solid pre-Clovis date at Topper to between 16,000
and 20,000 years ago.
“At that point, the big boys started getting interested that we had
dates for 20,000 [years ago] that were done by some of the best people
in the country,” Goodyear says. “Finally, we had that baseline we
needed for the rest of the scientific community to examine.”
One of those scientists was Dennis Stanford. As curator of archaeology
for the Smithsonian Institution, his word carries serious weight in
the field.
“At the time, I was very interested in Al’s work,” Stanford says.
“Al’s recognized as a good, solid archaeologist. He’s not a crackpot —
when Al speaks, we tend to listen. I was quite pleased to hear that he
was considering examining lower levels and had found something.
“But I also remember thinking that I was glad Al was doing it and not
me. The Clovis-first model was the accepted thinking for close to a
century, a 60-year deadlock mold, and we realized that what it was was
a theory, not proof. And as proof started to come, I think people just
couldn’t deny it any longer.
“So finally we have people agreeing that yes, a certain people did
come over the land bridge. What we didn’t know is that it just so
happens there were people already here when they did it. It made us
all realize just how little we knew and know about America’s past.”
By 2002-03, Goodyear was set upon the task of accumulating evidence to
support his earlier dates, though he continued digging ever downward.
In 2003 he hit a white sand layer that was hard as concrete and, as he
dug slowly deeper, began noticing what looked like artifacts sticking
out of it. In 2004, The New York Times sent its top science writer,
Pulitzer-prize winner John Noble Wilford, down to investigate, and
that same year Goodyear found a layer of charcoal in it to date.
What came back, just like in 1998, blew him away yet again.
The typical Clovis spear point, evidence of a technology so effective
in hunting it was the WMD of its day. Photo by Daryl P. Miller,
S.C.I.A.A.
“I was hoping that dating would bring back numbers around 25,000 years
ago,” Goodyear says. “That was a date people could probably swallow.
“But no, I have to get back dates of 50,000 years ago, which according
to the dating and amount of error means that no matter what it’s at
least 40,000, if not much more. I was in an awkward position. Here are
artifacts we know are tools, here are the dates we know are accurate
and here I go again, getting up there in front of creation, on CNN
announcing a 50,000 date, the oldest radiocarbon dated site in North
America.
“Just as I had gotten people accustomed to 15-16,000, here I come
again. I had a lot of people blanch at the 50,000, but I told them it
was my opinion, take it or leave it, and people have done both.”
What most troubles people about Homo sapiens occupying South Carolina
50,000 years ago is, obviously, how did they get there? Commonly
accepted dates have the first Homo sapiens coming out of Africa around
70,000 years ago, making their way as far east as Australia by 50,000
year ago. To have made the East Coast by that time means either they
moved a lot more quickly than was believed possible, they left Africa
earlier than previously thought or they came a different route
altogether.
That’s where Stanford comes in. Since 1999, he has proposed a theory
of coastal migration called the Solutrean Theory, which contends that
early man made his way from Iberia, not Siberia, by following the ice
across from Europe and Greenland to North America between 17,000 and
21,000 years ago.
“Boats were the key,” Stanford says. “People say, ‘Well, why aren’t we
finding evidence of ancient boats and settlements?’ That’s because
those coastal settlements are now under hundreds of feet of water
because ancient sea levels were much lower. In the time period we’re
talking about, the coasts were up to 60-70 miles out to sea from where
they are now.
“Just a week or so ago we found out that some mastodon remains dredged
up in the 1970s off the coast of Virginia had a bi-pointed projectile
point embedded in it from material in North Carolina. People aren’t
willing to imagine cavemen out on the sea in boats, but that’s just a
crock of hooey. We know boats have been around from 40,000 to 60,000
years. They absolutely were, chasing oil-rich seals and mammals they
needed to survive.
“The food was on the water, and that’s where the people went. We have
to stop seeing the ocean and rivers as barriers. They weren’t
barriers, they were highways.”
Goodyear likes Stanford’s coastal-migration theory, though Stanford
admits that 50,000 years is “too early for our guys” coming from the
Iberian Peninsula.
“The key is to figure out how they got here. We know that people were
around 100,00 years ago, so there is a population that is available.
But I’m glad that’s for others to figure out.”
Source: Wikimedia.org, supplemented with information from Al Goodyear
and Dennis Stanford.
Topper Now: Comets, Clovis and Extinction
Allen West often visualizes the scene.
Clovis hunters, well established in places like Allendale, look up one
morning to a scene few have ever witnessed. Flashing across the sky
are streaks of fire, literally tearing the atmosphere apart. Then, a
series of explosions so loud they could be heard for thousands of
miles, followed closely after by a fireball that would have set most
of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific on fire.
“To start with, people would have been able to see these objects
coming for some time before they hit, just extremely bright,” says
West, a geophysicist from Arizona who used the Topper site to help
pioneer research that only in the last couple of years solved the
ancient mystery of what caused a mass extinction in America
approximately 12,900 years ago.
“It was most likely a fragmented comet, and it would have stretched
across the sky for thousands of miles. Then, the explosions — it would
have been like the atmosphere became a boiler. The only thing I can
think of is to imagine what it’s like to be in a nuclear exchange, one
explosion after another after another. It would have been a canopy of
fire from horizon to horizon in all directions.”
Scientists have long known that for some reason, much of the flora and
most of the large animals in North America — including the woolly
mammoth — went extinct in a very short time. Many ascribed the die-off
to overhunting by Clovis peoples, disease, abrupt climate change or a
combination of the three.
West wasn’t buying it, and turned to what was known: Just as America
was warming itself following the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago, a
temperature reversal sparked a 1,000-year cold period, known as the
Younger-Dryas interval. West believed only a comet or volcano could
have initiated a nuclear winter-type effect, and no volcanic culprit
fit the bill.
“We had reason to believe, markers, that showed us that it’s possible
a comet exploded over the Great Lakes area around 12,900 years ago,”
West says. “We knew that most every animal over 220 pounds died, and
only animals less than 220 pounds lived.
“What we needed to find were sites that were at that established
Clovis level and look for evidence of an impact. Only a few, like
Topper, were active, so we went looking and got in touch with Al.”
Goodyear remembers the conversation well.
“Allen came down in 2005 and said he was looking for extraterrestrial
markers here,” Goodyear says. “And it’s at a time after I’ve announced
50,000 years and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Wow, this is all I need,
someone really looking for E.T.’”
West recalls a similar exchange.
“Al is a friendly guy who is always willing to listen, and he listened
politely but was skeptical,” West says. “But as we began to find
markers in the form of nanodiamonds and magnetic microspherules, we
all began to get excited. There is no other natural function that
produces these things besides an extraterrestrial event.”
With evidence of both the explosion and mass fires, West, who also
postulates that the popular “Carolina Bays” formations are related to
this ancient event, got together with Goodyear to see whether and how
Clovis people would have been impacted.
“Obviously, if it’s not good for animals over 220 pounds, it’s not
going to be so hot for humans, either.”
That’s when Goodyear decided to look into it on his own.
“I went back and re-examined our South Carolina paleopoint database,
and found that Clovis points dropped off significantly after that date
until the advent of what we call the Redstone people,” Goodyear says.
“It was about a four-to-one drop-off, which doesn’t make sense just
because it had gotten cold. It was suspicious. These are people who
have survived ice ages, and yet I found similar, if not even more
drastic drop-offs in points in North Carolina and Virginia. I kind of
timidly laid those facts out there to them and they were able to use
it.”
With that information, West could begin to argue that the event
absolutely took its toll on Clovis, either wiping them out or driving
them off for some thousand years.
“That was solely Al Goodyear that led us to that,” West says. “Lo and
behold he found it, and that was really because Topper is such a
fantastic Clovis site besides its pre-Clovis value.
“Al’s reputation has been essential; he’s been one of our great team
members. We had 26 co-authors for the paper, each of whom brought
something essential, and Topper was key for us because it’s so well
known and investigated.”
Goodyear can’t say for sure what Topper has in store, only that it
isn’t nearly as excavated as it could be.
“Topper is like a box of chocolates, as Forest Gump says,” Goodyear
says. “You never know what you’re going to get out of it.
“The idea that we could have found stuff at 50,000 years, that blew my
mind. It’s now a matter of collecting more artifacts; it’ll be a while
before we’re able to overwhelm people.
“As someone who was Clovis-first, to find and accept not just pre-
Clovis but pre- pre- pre-Clovis, that’s something else. It’s a stretch
to get people to realize that there once were woolly mammoths walking
down Main Street, that there were people walking around here 50,000
years ago, but it’s true.
“Though it took the Savannah River to chase me to Topper, I’m glad it
worked out how it did. I’ve learned not to say that Topper has
finished giving up its secrets.”
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