Archeology - Homo erectus in Mexico?
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Federico Solorzano and the forehead bone from Lake Chapala. Most researchers shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment
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For several decades, Federico Solorzano has been collecting ancient bones from the shores of Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico; Bones he found and bones brought to him, animal bones and human bones. One day the veteran anthropology and paleontology lecturer was rummaging through his collection, and suddenly noticed some unusual-looking items: a piece of a forehead bone and a piece of a human jaw, which did not match a modern skull.
Then, upon further examination, it became clear to Solorzano that if you place the forehead bone from Lake Chapala on a model of the "man from Tautawal" - the remains of a human type known as Homo erectus, which many believe was the ancestor of Homo sapiens - there is a perfect match.
However, according to the explanation, Homo erectus was extinct 100 to 200 years ago - tens of thousands of years before the first humans arrived in the Americas according to the hypothesis. Moreover, archaeologists have never found a remains of Homo erectus in the Americas. "Most researchers just shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment," said Robson Bonnicksen, director of the Center for Early American Studies at Texas A&M University. "This does not mean that the finding is not real. It just means that there is no evidence to compare."
Solorzano's find was described at a conference held in Mexico City last month, where new research on early man in the Americas was discussed. The bone that Solorsano discovered is "in a category by itself," Bonnicksen said. The find is so strange that it was generally ignored, precisely at a time when other recent discoveries are renewing the debate on the question of when man arrived in the Americas, and from where.
Until recently, most archaeologists in the United States believed that the first Americans arrived on the continent about 13,500 years ago, after a temporary continental corridor was created in the Bering Strait area, which separates Siberia from Alaska. The humans who passed through the corridor, known as the Clovis after a site near Clovis, New Mexico, likely hunted mammoths and other large animals, leaving behind remains of well-crafted arrowheads and other tools all over North America, and some argue South America as well.
A minority of researchers still adhere to the "Clovis first" position. The evidence for an earlier landing in the Americas is tenuous, scattered and controversial. Archaeologists have suggested alternative routes – from Asia or Australia via the Pacific Ocean, or from Europe or Africa via the Atlantic Ocean – although most say a journey from northeast Asia is the most likely option.
South American researchers say they have discovered several sites that are 10,000 to 15 years old, and claim that the Clovis could not have migrated to Tierra del Fuego, at the southern end of South America, so soon after the formation of the continental corridor between Asia and Alaska.
The evidence for human habitation in an earlier period in the Americas, despite its flimsiness, is fascinating. Among these evidences is a tool that may be a hand scraper, with blood spatter on it from more than 34 thousand years ago in Monte Verde in Chile; Items that may be stone tools at a site in Brazil that are 40 to 50 years old; human remains that were up to 28 thousand years old, found near Puebla in central Mexico; And another site in Monte Verde, which is at least 14 thousand years old - about 500 years before the formation of the land crossing from Asia, about 15 thousand kilometers to the north.
However, the ancient dates are still in question. A claim of the existence of 250-year-old human vessels near the Valasco Reservoir in Mexico was met with derision in the 70s, although other researchers have returned to excavating the area. Proponents of the "Clovis first" theory say that the early dates may reflect errors in the dating of the samples. According to them, natural breaking of rocks and other materials may explain findings that look like early processed tools. "If you're trying to break through an agreed-upon boundary, you need indisputable evidence," said archaeologist Stuart Fiddle, author of a textbook on the early Americans and one of the supporters of the "Clobis first" theory.
Solorzano's findings raise so many unsolved questions that they have remained a curiosity until now. The few scientists who have analyzed the bones agree that they look human and are very, very old. "These are definitely human bones," said Joel Irish, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. According to him, it is possible that they originated from a "modern man with a very primitive appearance", but such a man had to be "very ancient". Attempts to date the finds using modern methods have so far failed due to the lack of tissue remains.
Another source of frustration for archaeologists is the fact that no one knows exactly when and where it was discovered. It was apparently found during a period of drought, between 1947 and 1956, when a large area of the bottom of Lake Chapala was exposed.
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