1
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There's something rotten in Denmark here.
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Something nasty is going on.
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It's a vicious circle.
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You know with each successive investigation, the pictures seem to get even more complicated
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and confusing.
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These people have been ordered not to grant me an interview.
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Somebody didn't want that dig dug.
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In 1959, Louis Leakey and his wife Mary changed the vision of the world when they discovered
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the remains of an ancestral human who lived in Africa almost two million years ago.
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At Olduvai, Leakey discovered fossilized bone with chipped stones that proved human tool
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making extended back to an unbelievably distant past.
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The Leakeys got an age range of around 1.1 million years when they used an experimental
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dating method.
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Fish and track dating was a new technique that tested radioactive decay in mineral crystals
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found in the layers of lava and volcanic ash overlying the bones and artifacts.
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In the same year, perhaps even the same field season, one of the great coincidences in
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archaeological science occurred on the other side of the globe.
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In 1959, Juan Armento Camacho, a gifted amateur, discovered stone artifacts and fossilized
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animal bones that were eroding from the banks of an old lake bed in central Mexico.
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The finds from Africa and Mexico share many similarities, but the story of what happened
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with each discovery is one of the most dramatically different parallels in the history of archaeology.
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While Leakey's finds were embraced as confirmation of man's origins in Africa, Armento's discovery
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ignited a firestorm of controversy about man's first occurrence in the New World and a suppression
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of evidence that continues to this day.
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Near the city of Puebla, about 70 miles southeast of Mexico City, a number of ancient volcanoes
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rise from the central plateau.
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The region was known to the Aztecs as the land of giants.
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When the Spanish began digging their foundations for their 17th century cathedrals, they had
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unearthed the bones of large mammals unlike anything they had ever seen.
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By the 1950s, paleontologists had known for decades that the shores of the Valsaquillo
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Reservoir were a rich source of Pleistocene fossils, the bones of large mammals that
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had lived in the region long ago but became extinct at the end of the last ice age.
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During the field season in 1959, Juan Armento Camacho found the artifact that launched one
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of the New World's most controversial scientific mysteries.
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As he began to clean a fragment from an ancient mastodon bone, he discovered artwork.
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He saw the engraved images of several different animals that lived during the last ice age.
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Heads of a feline, serpent and mastodon, as well as hunting scenes, were all executed
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with extraordinary artistic capability.
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One image is thought to be a tapir, a sort of pig being brought down by spears.
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This elephant-type creature has been identified as a gonfathir, a relative of the mastodon.
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Unlike its later descendant, the elephant, it has four straight tusks.
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This may be the only representation of its kind ever found.
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In another engraving, Chris Hartaker recognized what he thought was the elegant depiction
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of a horse.
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It was possible that Armento had uncovered some of the oldest human artifacts and probably
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the oldest art ever discovered in the New World.
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The time he found it, Armento knew what a good scientist should do.
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He kept the artifact a secret, but began to invite preeminent specialists to verify the
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discovery.
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Microscopic studies of the engraving showed that the bone had been engraved when it was
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still fresh, what the paleontologists call green bone.
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This indicated that the artist worked soon after the animal was killed, and the artifact
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was not a recently drawn fake.
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But how old was it?
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In 1926, J.D. Figgins made a breakthrough in American archeology.
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He proved that humans had lived in the New World during the Ice Age, the time of the
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giant mammals.
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At a site in Folsom, New Mexico, he discovered a man-made spear point among the bones of
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an extinct bison antiquus.
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At the time, scientists believed that humans first arrived in the New World about 4,000
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years ago.
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But with this new discovery, the date was pushed back to somewhere between 20 and 500,000
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years.
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In 1926, no one knew when the Ice Age actually occurred.
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It was not until Willard Libby developed the technology of radiocarbon dating that scientists
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could determine that the last Ice Age and its megafauna started to vanish around 14,000
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years ago.
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In the late 1950s, the new carbon dating technique was gaining wide acceptance, but Armenta
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quickly realized that he could not use it.
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His artifacts had been in the ground for so long that their chemical composition had changed
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from organic bone material to mineralized fossil, which contained no carbon compounds
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that could be tested by radiocarbon dating.
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Armenta immediately recognized the potential significance of his find.
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The stakes were high, and he knew he must proceed carefully.
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He invited scientists from all over the world.
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One of the first on the scene was famed Paleo-Indian archaeologist Dr. Hannah Marie
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Wormington.
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After examining the collection, she was convinced that the Valsicchio artifacts were an extremely
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important find.
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Meanwhile, word of the discovery leaked out to the press, and in the summer of 1960, Life
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Magazine published a feature article about Armenta and his site.
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The now famous engraved mastodon bone was sent to the Smithsonian Institution for public
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display.
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However, it was soon returned to Mexico, and in a strange foreshadowing of events, seems
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to have become lost.
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As public interest in the site was growing, Armenta made another amazing discovery.
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In 1961, in the bottom of an arroyo, he found a spearhead.
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Nearby, still in situ in the bank, was an elephant jawbone with an obvious crack, into
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which the point fit perfectly.
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As Armenta describes the find,
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reveals the tremendous force of the impact.
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My hypothesis is that men were hunting a mammoth, and though aiming for the throat, they missed.
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But the misfortune of the hunters was a great fortune of the prehistorians, as a projectile
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was driven into the edge of the mandible, and the animal carried it in its escape,
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keeping it for the rest of its life.
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Now mammoths were supposed to have lived during the ice age, and were extinct approximately
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20,000 years ago.
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At the time that Juan found this, man was only supposed to have been in the New World
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for 10,000 years, so he thought he had good evidence, a smoking gun, essentially, a doubling
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of age for man in the New World.
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The Peabody Museum at Harvard had been in discussions for setting up an expedition at
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the time.
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The discovery of a man-made spear point embedded in the jawbone of an ice age mammal was like
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a carrot on a stick, and field work began the following spring, in 1962.
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On the same day the Life Magazine article was published, Wormington wrote to her protege,
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Cynthia Irwin Williams, describing her impressions of the site, and hinting at its potential
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significance.
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Wormington had always been a pioneer.
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When she began her studies in 1937, women were not yet allowed in the Department of
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Archaeology at Harvard.
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Undaunted, she sat outside on the steps of the lecture hall to take notes.
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Wormington began mentoring Irwin when Cynthia was a teenager.
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Cynthia's mother also had a strong interest in archaeology.
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Kay Irwin was an innovator in the casting of artifact reproductions.
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She specialized in adding the artistic touch of perfect color duplication when she recreated
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the flints, cherts, and other stone materials of the past.
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This skill would prove more important than anyone could have imagined as events unfolded.
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In the mid-1950s, Marie Wormington was writing her masterpiece, Ancient Man in North America.
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The fourth edition was the first major synthesis of paleo research to include the new radiocarbon
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dating method.
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To professionals and the public, she effectively communicated the idea that the record of
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paleo peoples in the New World began around 12,000 years ago.
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Wormington was optimistic that the new technologies would lead to further discovery.
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She knew that the Valsaccio site would require careful excavation, and her protege, Cynthia
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Irwin, was ready to lead the team.
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In 1962, Cynthia Irwin was one year shy of marriage and her Harvard Ph.D.
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She had already led several world-class digs.
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She was granted a permit from the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, known
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as the INAH.
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Along with Juan Armenta, she began her first season at Huea Paco, on the shores of the
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Valsaccio Reservoir.
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She went down there for three years, 1962, 64, 66.
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She organized probably one of the first interdisciplinary archaeological expeditions, at least in Mexico,
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looking for early man in America during the Ice Age.
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Interdisciplinary means that it wasn't just an archaeologist going down looking for artifacts.
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She brought along Smithsonian paleontologists and geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey.
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The tops in their field.
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The site, called Hueatlaco, was once the channel of an ancient stream.
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Cynthia chose a spot to excavate not far from where Armenta had discovered the engraved
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bones.
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The site turned productive very quickly.
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Even spear points were uncovered, and Cynthia's team began to carefully record the positions
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where the artifacts were found.
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The sites that were chosen all were productive.
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All had artifacts, and all were associated with Ice Age animals.
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So it was an incredible beginning in 1962.
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It eventually turned out to be one of the most controversial sites that's been excavated,
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one that we have not resolved the issues.
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The site is stratified.
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In other words, younger stuff is at the top, and you just dig on down through lower stuff.
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These are casts of the artifacts, starting up here with the upper Hueatlaco unit C,
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is the youngest, and then this material down here from El Horno is the oldest.
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That makes perfectly good sense, because this type of projectile point is bifacial,
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it's flaked on both sides, and it's bi-pointed.
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To my way of thinking, this is an Asian-style projectile point, because it's very thick
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relative to its width, and it's pointed at both ends.
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We can follow this style of projectile point all the way back into Siberia.
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We see these in South America starting around 12,000, between 13,000 and 12,000, and so
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to find this at roughly that same age in the Valley of Mexico makes perfectly good
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sense.
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One of the interesting parts about these spear points was that they did not have the customary
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flute that was essentially the earmark of Clovis points, so she knew she wasn't dealing
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with a Clovis culture here.
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Beneath the volcanic layer, called the Hueatlaco ash, are deposits of clay.
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Beneath those layers are beds C and E, where Irwin Williams found bifacial spear points
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and Ice Age animal bones.
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Beneath that was bed I, where the older unifacial spear points were found.
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So they started excavating down below, and then all of a sudden they started getting
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these very interesting flint artifacts.
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These are projectile points that are unifacial.
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In other words, actually they're not even bifacial, they're just pieces of flint that
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have been shaped to a sharp point with these steep flakes coming all the way down here,
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all the way down there, and that's all they could do to make the artifact.
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These were found with mammoth bones, with camels, with horse, all kinds of animals that
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are now extinct.
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Cynthia personally excavated each artifact as it was found.
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The stratigraphy and the relative positions of the stone tools made sense to her.
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It is generally accepted that bifacial tools were more complex, and the bifacial tradition
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more recent, than simpler unifacial tools that would be found in the earlier, lower
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levels of geological time.
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This led her to conclude that she had perhaps technological evolution occurring at this
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site.
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She had excellent bifaces on top, and she had unifaces on the bottom, all associated
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with extinct Ice Age animals.
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It couldn't have been better.
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The problem was dating.
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The bones were so fossilized, their organic materials had been replaced by minerals, preventing
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C14 from being used on these bones.
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There just wasn't enough organic material left to date.
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Cynthia believed they needed to find another site, away from the edges of the water, where
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the bone might not have become fossilized as quickly.
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So in 1966, Hal Maldi, the geologist, found about three or four miles away, stratigraphy
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in a deep wash called colapin.
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He found some stratigraphy or a layer of soil that he thought was of the same age and of
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the same nature as the materials they were digging out at the reservoir.
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Hal Maldi found what he was looking for.
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In a layer of stratigraphy, which was identical to the stratum in which the artifacts were
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discovered, he found a shell that was not fossilized.
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Using the carbon-14 dating method on this shell from colapin, the age of 22,000 years
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was derived.
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As radical as it seemed, 22,000 years would eventually become the most conservative estimate
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for the arrival of early humans at Valsiquillo.
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As a matter of fact, if it's only 22,000 or 24,000, as she originally thought, that's
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really interesting too because it's totally different than anything we're getting at
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that age as well.
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And it is much older than anything we have in North America right now, by at least 6,000
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years.
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This young graduate student has found probably the earliest site in the New World.
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Was she right?
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Was she correct?
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What did she feel about this?
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She was nervous.
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If anything, Cynthia was extremely responsible as a scientist.
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She didn't want to go grandstanding and go blabbing to the news.
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In fact, we have a letter where she's writing to the director of the Peabody Museum, Dr.
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Breaux, where she doesn't want to go public with this yet.
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She's feeling very uneasy about these dates because of their great antiquity.
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Scientists immediately knew that a 22,000 year date paralleled the oldest known spear
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points found in the Old World.
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This meant that if the spear points found at Huayalaco were any lower in the strat
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column than Colapin, she would have to face the unthinkable, that she had found the oldest
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spear points ever discovered in the New World.
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As controversial as this date was, it was nothing compared with what was yet to come.
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The release of the 22,000 year date triggered an avalanche of unexpected events.
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Dr. Jose Luis Lorenzo, head archeologist at Mexico's National Museum, published a
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bulletin accusing Irwin Williams and Juan Armenta of planting their discoveries.
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Then, according to eyewitnesses, Lorenzo sent armed federales to the site to intimidate
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the workers, trying to elicit confessions that they planted the controversial spear points.
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Juan Armenta's daughter, Céline, remembers those days.
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The scientific authorities sent some men with pistols to try to scare the workers at the
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field.
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And they were about 60 workers.
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But three of them accepted that the fossils were planted.
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And only these three people who signed the paper saying, yes, we planted and the scientists
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planted the fossils.
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The other 50 and more workers never accepted.
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They were very honest.
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The people with the guns wanted the workers to say that the site was salted.
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What that means is that instead of digging the bones and the tools out from the sediments
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themselves, somebody planted them in the dirt and then dug them up and said, oh, we found
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them here.
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Jose Lorenzo, who was the Mexican archeologist who's well known for his Paleo-Indian work,
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I think was a little jealous that, one, he didn't find that early stuff.
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Two, that it was an American that found it.
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And three, it was an American woman that found it.
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And so he did everything he could to discredit Cynthia and the work.
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I don't think she was directly accused of planting the artifacts herself.
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Instead, it may have been something much worse, that she was incompetent to realize that
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artifacts were being planted on her site.
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These sites were all very hard sediments.
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They were not dirt, like you usually see archeologists digging in in your science
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films.
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Consider a sidewalk.
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If you're trying to convince an archeologist that something in that sidewalk had been planted,
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this means you've got to break open that sidewalk and try and cover it up.
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Having worked down there last year and experienced the density and the hardness of the sediments,
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both the Mexican archeologists and myself agreed there's just no way you could plant
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artifacts in this material and hope to get away with it.
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Marie Wormington quickly moved to her protégé's defense.
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In the fall, she organized a professional conference, essentially to defend Cynthia
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against the claims of fraud.
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The archeological professionals closed ranks behind Cynthia, confirming the validity of
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her excavation work.
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She was one of the greats in instituting new techniques, new scientific techniques for
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recovering the most minute detail.
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And this was one of the wonderful elements she brought to her profession and why she
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was so highly regarded for her entire life.
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They owned the artifacts.
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She was working under a permit that these artifacts belonged to the Museo Nacional
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in Mexico City, where some of them worked.
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And so when she left, she deposited these along with the bone at the museum.
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And when she went back to study them, they were all gone.
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They've never been seen since.
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Now fortunately for all of us, her mother was with her.
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And while she was in Mexico, she passed those artifacts before they were given back to the
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museum.
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And when she died, her collection came here.
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And so this is all that is left of that excavation, is what these plastic artifacts in this box.
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So right now, the important thing is Cynthia's now passed away, as have the archeologists
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in Mexico that were basically jealous of her finding this real early stuff.
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And so now it's time to go back and reassess what actually went on there.
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In spite of the support Erwin Williams received from Wormington and her peers, the controversy
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about the artifacts was soon to escalate when new dating techniques were applied.
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In an attempt to accurately determine the age of the volcanic ash, two geologists from
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the United States Geological Survey were brought in.
24:34.200 --> 24:40.840
Barney Szabo ran tests using uranium series dating, while Virginia Steen-McIntyre examined
24:40.840 --> 24:45.840
mineral crystals using her expertise in tephrachronology.
24:45.840 --> 24:52.920
No one was prepared for the shock when Barney Szabo announced a uranium series age of 250,000
24:52.920 --> 24:54.800
years old.
24:54.800 --> 25:00.680
We dated the strata at 250,000 years, a quarter of a million years, which was more than 10
25:00.680 --> 25:04.760
times older than they thought they should be.
25:04.760 --> 25:10.080
At this point, Erwin Williams went from potentially making history for redating the arrival of
25:10.080 --> 25:15.480
man in the New World to facing dates that were so extreme she felt they could not be
25:15.480 --> 25:17.440
published at all.
25:17.440 --> 25:22.400
But more importantly, she was denied permission to ever work at the site again.
25:22.400 --> 25:25.440
Her official report was never completed.
25:25.440 --> 25:34.240
All of the artifacts have gone missing, and the site was closed to further investigation.
25:34.240 --> 25:40.120
The story of Erwin Williams and Armenta's historic discoveries has almost been forgotten,
25:40.120 --> 25:45.360
as the memory of the scientific uproar of Valsecillo has faded away.
25:45.360 --> 25:50.240
Forty years have passed, but although many prominent archaeologists still believe that
25:50.240 --> 25:56.320
the Valsecillo site contains important evidence, it took one man's vision and tenacity to
25:56.320 --> 25:58.960
reignite the investigation.
25:58.960 --> 26:05.800
So we need a breakthrough site like the one at Larkville, which just jumps you back here,
26:05.800 --> 26:12.280
and then you've got to start rethinking and reconstructing everything.
26:12.280 --> 26:18.880
In 1997, George Carter, an archaeologist with a long career of investigating controversial
26:18.920 --> 26:25.480
cases, called upon his friend, Marshall Payne, to reopen the Valsecillo site and to underwrite
26:25.480 --> 26:28.440
a new series of field tests.
26:28.440 --> 26:30.800
And then they said, well, how did you get interested in the way at Larkville?
26:30.800 --> 26:34.080
I says, well, George Carter called me one time and asked me if I wouldn't look into
26:34.080 --> 26:35.080
that.
26:35.080 --> 26:38.600
And he says something like, what are you going to do next time?
26:38.600 --> 26:41.720
I says, I'm not answering the phone.
26:41.720 --> 26:48.040
Historically, many of the great advances in American science have begun with the entrepreneurial
26:48.040 --> 26:53.080
dreams of financial patrons from outside the profession.
26:53.080 --> 26:57.320
For example, today's most widely held theory for the peopling of the New World across
26:57.320 --> 27:02.600
Beringia was advanced at the beginning of the 20th century by collaboration between
27:02.600 --> 27:06.600
science and private philanthropic support.
27:06.600 --> 27:12.280
Franz Boas from the American Museum of Natural History launched teams of anthropological
27:12.280 --> 27:15.900
researchers into Alaska and Siberia.
27:15.900 --> 27:21.580
The expedition was underwritten by a New York financier by the name of Morris K. Jessop.
27:21.580 --> 27:27.340
Boas's scientific vision, financed privately by Jessop, became a foundation block for the
27:27.340 --> 27:32.340
emerging hypothesis that the first Americans came from Siberia.
27:36.340 --> 27:44.340
Similarly, in 2001, a new archaeological expedition combining Mexican and U.S. scientists was
27:44.780 --> 27:51.340
organized to go to Vasequillo and reassess the results of Cynthia Irwin's earlier work.
27:51.340 --> 27:57.740
This new research was funded entirely by Marshall Payne.
27:57.740 --> 28:04.740
What I intended to do is to redo what was done many years ago by Cynthia Irwin Williams,
28:05.780 --> 28:09.740
but to use more modern techniques in the evaluation of what was done.
28:09.740 --> 28:13.260
Most scientists accepted that the artifacts were real.
28:13.460 --> 28:18.260
The age of the site ultimately created the greatest controversy.
28:18.260 --> 28:25.060
The new research team devoted itself to reanalyzing the entire sequence of dating events.
28:25.060 --> 28:31.180
In 1968, a new and still experimental dating method was used directly on the bones that
28:31.180 --> 28:33.780
Cynthia found with the tools.
28:33.780 --> 28:40.780
Charles Nasser, a dating specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey, joined the effort.
28:40.780 --> 28:47.780
The dating of this site started off when geologists working with anthropologists collected
28:48.540 --> 28:55.540
bones from large mammals that were associated in the same layer as the artifact tools.
28:56.160 --> 29:01.680
These bones were given to Barney Szabo at the USGS in Denver.
29:01.680 --> 29:08.340
He was involved with a technique called uranium series disequilibrium dating.
29:08.340 --> 29:14.220
As uranium decays by alpha emission, new daughter elements such as thorium-234 are
29:14.220 --> 29:17.800
created.
29:17.800 --> 29:23.800
This process continues over time with both elements accumulating.
29:23.800 --> 29:27.540
By measuring the amounts of the new daughter elements and comparing it to the amount of
29:27.540 --> 29:33.540
uranium that was present, an age can be calculated.
29:33.540 --> 29:38.100
We don't know what the top end on a lot of Barney's ages were, but we know that they
29:38.100 --> 29:41.820
were greater than, certainly greater than 100,000 years.
29:41.820 --> 29:45.420
So this was a bombshell.
29:45.420 --> 29:51.260
100,000 years was far earlier than most scientists believed the first humans would have been
29:51.260 --> 29:54.380
capable of reaching the new world from Asia.
29:54.380 --> 30:00.080
The uranium dating of the bones was just one of the tests using new dating techniques.
30:00.080 --> 30:04.940
In 1966, Virginia Steen McIntyre joined the team.
30:04.940 --> 30:09.860
McIntyre was a young graduate student who specialized in the new technologies used to
30:09.860 --> 30:12.540
date layers of volcanic ash.
30:12.540 --> 30:17.640
The different layers of ash, or tephras, were the result of different volcanic eruptions
30:17.640 --> 30:21.540
over time.
30:21.540 --> 30:26.700
If geologists could calculate the date of the volcanic eruption by analyzing the ash
30:26.700 --> 30:32.540
layer, they would then know that the tools found below the tephra were even older.
30:32.540 --> 30:37.500
McIntyre used an experimental dating method that calculated the trace elements of water
30:37.500 --> 30:41.580
trapped in crystals that formed with the ash.
30:41.580 --> 30:43.740
That's a piece of pumice.
30:43.740 --> 30:46.940
Lightweight, probably would float on water.
30:46.940 --> 30:49.900
Little tiny crystals in there, crystals that I work with.
30:49.900 --> 30:52.140
So small, they're smaller than grains of sand.
30:52.140 --> 30:58.540
Although her method at the time was very experimental, she too got an age in the range of 250,000
30:58.540 --> 31:04.380
years, far too early for the accepted dates of humans in the New World.
31:04.380 --> 31:09.420
Changing the date of the age of man in the New World from 10,000 to 20,000 would have
31:09.420 --> 31:10.420
been just great.
31:10.420 --> 31:13.180
It would have made all of us that worked on the site heroes.
31:13.180 --> 31:19.500
But to go from 10,000 to 250,000, it was just too much for most people.
31:19.500 --> 31:24.300
This led to further testing of the volcanic ash layers.
31:24.300 --> 31:35.260
The soundtrack dating relies on a very rare event that happens to uranium atoms.
31:35.260 --> 31:43.060
When a volcano erupts, it forms zircon crystals and volcanic glass, in which are trapped uranium-238
31:43.060 --> 31:44.060
atoms.
31:44.060 --> 31:50.300
The uranium spontaneously decays, releasing energy when splitting into two roughly equal
31:50.300 --> 31:51.900
nuclei.
31:51.900 --> 31:56.660
These highly charged particles repel each other and shoot off in opposite directions
31:56.660 --> 31:57.980
with great force.
31:57.980 --> 32:03.780
They leave behind damage scars or fission tracks in the mineral.
32:03.780 --> 32:08.660
Because the radioactive decay occurs at a known rate, the density of fission tracks
32:08.660 --> 32:15.780
can be compared to the amount of uranium within a mineral grain to determine its age.
32:15.860 --> 32:24.500
My ages came out on two different samples of about 400,000 years and about 600,000 years.
32:24.500 --> 32:29.140
They could not have been 10,000 or 15,000.
32:29.140 --> 32:31.860
What happened to these findings of yours?
32:31.860 --> 32:34.340
It appears that it just went off into a black hole.
32:34.340 --> 32:38.460
The data never ever gets cited.
32:38.460 --> 32:42.420
Nobody ever talks to me about it.
32:42.420 --> 32:45.340
It's just as if we had never done it.
32:45.340 --> 32:52.940
Well, we have it in Cynthia's own writing that those radical dates are not to be used
32:52.940 --> 32:56.740
because they're too unreliable.
32:56.740 --> 32:58.940
What would be your comment?
32:58.940 --> 33:05.900
At the time that they were, this work was begun, they were relatively new.
33:05.900 --> 33:11.460
But they had been well tested in the geological literature and geologists accepted their
33:11.460 --> 33:13.380
results as valid.
33:13.420 --> 33:15.220
So how surprising is this, Chuck?
33:15.220 --> 33:20.780
Didn't you tell me that you were involved in the Olduvai discoveries in Africa with
33:20.780 --> 33:21.780
your dating?
33:21.780 --> 33:29.420
About the same time I got involved with dating zircons from the Olduvai site and it pretty
33:29.420 --> 33:37.620
well settled that early man had been in Africa for at least 1.8 to 2 million years.
33:37.620 --> 33:42.860
The discoveries at Olduvai and Valsecillo were made in the same year and both were
33:42.860 --> 33:48.860
dated using fish and track dating, conducted by the same expert, Charles Nasser of the
33:48.860 --> 33:51.200
U.S. Geological Survey.
33:51.200 --> 33:56.740
The African site changed human history, but the Mexican site was ignored and virtually
33:56.740 --> 33:58.140
forgotten.
33:58.140 --> 34:00.260
The question is, why?
34:07.700 --> 34:13.180
Of course, when I was a graduate student growing up, I was taught that Clovis was
34:13.180 --> 34:15.180
the earliest period.
34:15.180 --> 34:19.460
So we were looking at 11,005, maybe 12,000 years ago.
34:19.460 --> 34:23.660
Now we're pushing it back, of course, to the 15,000s.
34:23.660 --> 34:28.420
But certainly, I don't think there is a living archaeologist that would ever hold to the
34:28.420 --> 34:32.660
idea that people were here 200 or so thousand years ago.
34:32.660 --> 34:37.220
So what we have is not a dilemma, but what I've always called in my teaching a trilemma,
34:37.220 --> 34:41.340
a triangle, any two of these components can be true.
34:41.340 --> 34:45.420
Cynthia can be right and the dating can be right.
34:45.420 --> 34:49.500
An archaeological theory about the origin of people in the New World is wrong.
34:49.500 --> 34:54.820
The origin of people in the New World is right and the dating is right and therefore Cynthia
34:54.820 --> 34:57.540
Irwin Williams was wrong.
34:57.540 --> 35:03.460
Or Cynthia Irwin Williams is right, the origin and development of population in the New World
35:03.460 --> 35:05.620
is right and the dating is wrong.
35:06.460 --> 35:12.500
Well, I just don't see how you can deal with that because the dating was done by tephrochromologists
35:12.500 --> 35:14.220
that I respect and understand.
35:14.220 --> 35:19.420
The archaeology was done by archaeologists that I respect and understand.
35:19.420 --> 35:26.140
And as a practicing archaeologist, I am not going to go against archaeological method
35:26.140 --> 35:33.740
and theory that's stating basically that people had to come in somewhere after maybe 30,000
35:33.740 --> 35:35.060
years ago.
35:35.060 --> 35:42.380
So this is a completely fascinating, completely aggravating, completely wonderful site to
35:42.380 --> 35:47.460
teach about because as I said, any two can be right, but not all three.
35:47.460 --> 35:51.300
And so something at some point is going to have to give.
35:53.180 --> 35:56.100
Which leg of the trilemma should be revised?
35:56.100 --> 36:02.020
The geochronology, the archaeology, or the theory of man's arrival in the New World?
36:03.020 --> 36:09.300
Marshall Payne decided to first reexamine the geochronology of the volcanic ash to
36:09.300 --> 36:13.740
find out if it was indeed 250,000 years old.
36:13.740 --> 36:20.340
He began the process by sending the original Wayatlaco reports to several geologists.
36:20.340 --> 36:23.340
And back came the reports and they all said the same thing.
36:23.340 --> 36:28.940
They said that the geology looks sound, but if you really want to be certain about this,
36:28.940 --> 36:35.220
you should use techniques that are available today that were not available 30 years ago.
36:35.220 --> 36:40.620
So we gathered a couple hundred pounds of that material and the Mexicans shipped that
36:40.620 --> 36:50.180
material to Caltech to a man named Ken Farley who is the originator and the expert on another
36:50.180 --> 36:55.060
dating system used in geology called uranium thorium helium dating.
36:56.060 --> 37:02.220
This would be the first time the uranium thorium helium method would be used in archaeology.
37:02.220 --> 37:07.220
Dr. Farley's results were even more astounding than what Marshall expected.
37:08.940 --> 37:12.140
Uranium thorium helium dating is a very old idea.
37:12.140 --> 37:16.100
It goes back to the discovery of the alpha particle, the first particle discovered to
37:16.100 --> 37:19.300
be a radioactive product.
37:19.300 --> 37:24.940
It's based on the idea that when uranium decays, it produces alpha particles at a known rate.
37:25.820 --> 37:29.940
By measuring the amount of alpha particles that are present in a crystal, one can establish
37:29.940 --> 37:35.020
how long it's been since the helium began to accumulate in that crystal.
37:35.020 --> 37:39.820
The advantage of the uranium thorium helium system relative to the fission tract system
37:39.820 --> 37:46.220
is that there are a lot more alpha particles produced than there are fission tracts produced.
37:46.220 --> 37:50.420
So you get a much larger signal, which is important when one is trying to date very
37:50.420 --> 37:52.440
young samples.
37:52.440 --> 37:59.560
So I was sent zircon separates, which I analyzed here in my lab, heating these crystals to
37:59.560 --> 38:06.640
1300 degrees C with a laser or with a resistance furnace.
38:06.640 --> 38:10.440
The helium comes out of the crystals at that temperature by diffusion.
38:10.440 --> 38:17.760
We then retrieve the crystals from the vacuum furnace after the helium is analyzed, retrieve
38:17.760 --> 38:22.480
them from the furnace, dissolve them, and analyze them for uranium and thorium by inductively
38:22.480 --> 38:25.440
coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
38:25.440 --> 38:30.740
I exacted blood oath promises from these scientists that they would not communicate with each
38:30.740 --> 38:34.440
other until I had their results in my hand.
38:34.440 --> 38:37.540
And they agreed to do this, and in fact, that's what they did.
38:37.540 --> 38:39.960
The zircon crystals were sent to me blind.
38:39.960 --> 38:44.920
All I was told was that the crystals were likely to be young, analyzed the samples,
38:45.760 --> 38:49.080
which was between 400 and 500,000 years.
38:49.080 --> 38:53.560
People are free to believe what they want to believe, but the technique I use is based
38:53.560 --> 38:58.440
on extremely well-established physical principles, and if you disbelieve the physical principles
38:58.440 --> 39:04.080
on which it's based, that's not science.
39:04.080 --> 39:09.360
Leg one of the trilemma, the geochronology, says the stratum above the artifacts could
39:09.360 --> 39:12.760
be as old as 500,000 years.
39:12.760 --> 39:18.340
The next question is, has the correlation between the way atlaco ash and the artifacts
39:18.340 --> 39:20.640
been properly identified?
39:20.640 --> 39:27.080
It's time to examine the second leg of the trilemma, the archaeology.
39:27.080 --> 39:31.900
Throughout the years Cynthia was excavating, her team developed a geological model that
39:31.900 --> 39:36.720
showed that all the levels of accumulated sediment were laid down successively on top
39:36.720 --> 39:39.680
of one another like a layer cake.
39:39.680 --> 39:44.880
All the artifacts and associated bones were excavated from strata below the way atlaco
39:44.880 --> 39:46.760
ash.
39:46.760 --> 39:53.000
The more advanced bifacial tools were found in bed C and E, while the older, more primitive
39:53.000 --> 39:56.800
unifacials were found in bed I.
39:56.800 --> 40:01.920
But was this interpretation of the stratigraphy correct?
40:01.920 --> 40:06.540
Geologist Hal Maldi went back to the site to retest the stratigraphy.
40:06.540 --> 40:13.740
The bottom line on this is that we were trying to determine whether there was continuity
40:13.740 --> 40:24.060
from the place where Cynthia had excavated in the 60s and the uppermost part of the exposed
40:24.060 --> 40:25.060
geology.
40:25.060 --> 40:27.720
And, in fact, that was the result.
40:27.720 --> 40:34.900
We found that it was layer after layer after layer with no interruption, no discontinuities,
40:34.900 --> 40:42.860
no places where there was any downcutting, a simple set of individual units, one on
40:42.860 --> 40:49.760
top of the other, from where Cynthia had dug all the way up to the top of the section.
40:49.760 --> 40:55.500
In the first leg of the trilemma, the geochronology says the age of the way atlaco ash was at
40:55.500 --> 41:01.100
least 250,000 years old, and some tests said it was much older.
41:01.100 --> 41:05.860
The second leg, the archaeology, bears out that the artifacts appear to have been found
41:05.860 --> 41:11.380
in a sequence of strata, which is entirely overlaid by the way atlaco ash.
41:11.380 --> 41:17.080
If these two legs of the trilemma are correct, this means that modern bifacial spear points
41:17.080 --> 41:21.940
were made in the New World a quarter of a million years ago.
41:21.940 --> 41:27.340
It's time to examine the third leg of the trilemma, the theory of man's arrival in the
41:27.340 --> 41:30.340
Americas.
41:30.340 --> 41:35.180
According to the prevailing archaeological model, modern man occupied North America
41:35.180 --> 41:41.820
around 15,000 years ago, and migrated into South America around 12,000 years ago.
41:41.820 --> 41:47.820
To date, most of the evidence found by archaeologists supports this scenario.
41:47.820 --> 41:53.420
But what happens when evidence is found that does not?
41:53.420 --> 42:01.300
If you can imagine that 22,000 year old dates were controversial, put another zero on that,
42:01.300 --> 42:09.940
and all of a sudden we're coming out with really nice spear points that nowhere else
42:09.940 --> 42:15.520
in the world were found at that antiquity.
42:15.520 --> 42:18.740
This was a huge problem.
42:18.740 --> 42:21.980
So Cynthia really didn't know what was going on.
42:21.980 --> 42:26.300
She wondered about the nature of the dates.
42:26.300 --> 42:33.260
There are some letters that have survived that discuss this type of quandary that she was in.
42:33.260 --> 42:39.200
I recently got a letter from Hal Maldi with some incredibly wild uranium dates on the
42:39.200 --> 42:41.460
Val Seccio material.
42:41.460 --> 42:46.560
I don't see how we can take them seriously since they conflict with the archaeology,
42:46.560 --> 42:51.460
with his own geologic correlations, and with a couple of C14 dates.
42:51.460 --> 42:55.540
However, God help us, he wants to publish them right away.
42:55.540 --> 42:59.980
I'm enclosing a copy of Hal's letter and my reply.
42:59.980 --> 43:06.260
Needless to say, any restraint you can exercise on him would be greatly appreciated.
43:06.260 --> 43:12.220
All we need to do at this point is to put that stuff in print, and every reputable prehistorian
43:12.220 --> 43:16.580
in the country will be rolling in the aisles.
43:16.580 --> 43:25.940
The Val Seccio material seemed to be about 250,000 years old.
43:25.940 --> 43:31.700
When I told Cynthia Irwin Williams about this, she sort of blew her top.
43:31.700 --> 43:34.260
She couldn't believe that this was so.
43:34.260 --> 43:39.500
I think as a result of that, Cynthia really gave up on the site.
43:39.500 --> 43:45.820
We got no feedback from her about anything further about her results.
43:46.060 --> 43:49.460
And she really came to a standstill.
43:49.460 --> 43:54.300
As a result of these controversial dates, Cynthia Irwin Williams never returned to Val
43:54.300 --> 43:55.580
Seccio.
43:55.580 --> 43:59.820
All of her artifacts and most of her field notes have vanished.
43:59.820 --> 44:04.420
She never published the final results of her six years of fieldwork.
44:04.420 --> 44:09.580
Juan Armenta was forbidden to return to the site, and fraudulent confessions were obtained
44:09.580 --> 44:11.220
at gunpoint.
44:11.220 --> 44:15.260
All his artifacts were confiscated, and his career was ruined.
44:15.260 --> 44:19.900
Dr. McIntyre relates what happened to her.
44:19.900 --> 44:23.420
I can still say I'm frustrated because the way at Lacocite is so important, and it's
44:23.420 --> 44:26.420
being totally ignored by the media.
44:26.420 --> 44:27.420
And I was rather naive.
44:27.420 --> 44:31.500
I thought, okay, we've got something big here, but I'm just going to stick with the
44:31.500 --> 44:32.500
date.
44:32.500 --> 44:34.500
We've got the information, we've got the facts, let's get the facts out and go on
44:34.500 --> 44:35.660
from there.
44:35.660 --> 44:38.460
And I didn't realize it was going to ruin my whole career.
44:38.460 --> 44:41.720
So which of the three legs is wrong?
44:41.720 --> 44:45.480
Some experts in the field believe they have found an explanation that could solve the
44:45.480 --> 44:47.940
mystery of the trilemma.
44:47.940 --> 44:58.900
Geologists call it an unconformity.
44:58.900 --> 45:04.000
Dr. Michael Waters is the director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans.
45:04.000 --> 45:08.760
He has worked on more than 50 archaeological field projects, and is well known for his
45:08.760 --> 45:12.480
expertise in geoarchaeology.
45:12.480 --> 45:18.120
Valsicchio and the way at Lacocite always intrigued me because it was one of the localities
45:18.120 --> 45:26.840
that had the possibility of strong evidence for pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas.
45:26.840 --> 45:31.220
The first thing I found when we went down to the site and examined the stratigraphy
45:32.220 --> 45:36.680
that we could identify bed-eye, and that bed-eye definitely went underneath the white
45:36.680 --> 45:39.060
lacquoash.
45:39.060 --> 45:44.860
The other thing that we found was that there was a major unconformity between bed-eye
45:44.860 --> 45:48.980
and the overlying stratigraphy.
45:48.980 --> 45:56.060
So there was an inset fill basically into the older sediments, confirming what Erwin
45:56.060 --> 45:58.340
Williams had found.
45:58.340 --> 46:02.340
It was in that layer that additional artifactual material was found.
46:02.340 --> 46:07.660
Now the difference between what I found and what was found in 1973 is that it was thought
46:07.660 --> 46:15.020
that those units that contained the bifacial material went, in addition to the bed-eye,
46:15.020 --> 46:18.340
also went underneath the white lacquoash.
46:18.340 --> 46:23.980
But I think that there's a very clear erosional context separating those layers which have
46:24.740 --> 46:32.220
the ones that contain the bifacial artifacts are clearly post-date the white lacquoash.
46:32.220 --> 46:36.540
There are two prevailing views to explain the strata above where the artifacts were
46:36.540 --> 46:37.820
found.
46:37.820 --> 46:42.380
Mike Waters' view says that an ancient river cut down through the successive layers of
46:42.380 --> 46:49.600
strata, including the white lacquoash, carving a deep trench through all the layers.
46:49.600 --> 46:54.480
The artifacts were deposited, and then new sediments were filled in up to the present
46:54.480 --> 46:55.800
level.
46:55.800 --> 47:00.840
In this scenario, the artifacts are not as old as the ash, and there is no conflict with
47:00.840 --> 47:05.400
the current theories of early man in the New World.
47:05.400 --> 47:10.920
The alternate view is that the artifacts were left behind in various strata before the volcanic
47:10.920 --> 47:13.440
ash overlaid the area.
47:13.440 --> 47:19.080
All the subsequent layers of strata, including the white lacquoash, were deposited in an
47:19.080 --> 47:23.360
unbroken sequence, sealing the artifacts below.
47:23.360 --> 47:27.640
This makes any artifact beneath by necessity older than the ash.
47:27.640 --> 47:32.720
The question is, which model is correct?
47:32.720 --> 47:37.880
So it became very obvious the thing that had to be done is to go back and dig it again,
47:37.880 --> 47:48.680
to analyze all these notions, and especially this idea of the undercutting of a stream.
47:48.680 --> 47:54.200
So the team went back to Mexico in 2001, this time accompanied by Bob McKinney and
47:54.200 --> 47:56.200
Sam Van Landingham.
47:56.200 --> 48:00.840
Their goal was to see, once and for all, if there was evidence for the stream that Mike
48:00.840 --> 48:07.120
says cut through the strata, separating the artifacts from the older ash layer.
48:07.120 --> 48:11.960
One way to determine that was to compare the rocks and soil on both sides of the erosional
48:11.960 --> 48:16.120
contact, where Mike claims the rock drastically changes.
48:16.120 --> 48:20.360
It was June 15th.
48:20.360 --> 48:21.360
Bob McKinney came.
48:21.360 --> 48:24.760
He's in the blue.
48:24.760 --> 48:29.720
Bob McKinney received his degree in geology from MIT and has been working with oil and
48:29.720 --> 48:33.200
mining companies for the past 40 years.
48:33.200 --> 48:37.980
After collecting samples from the site, he returned to Midland, Texas, where the monoliths
48:37.980 --> 48:40.080
were stored.
48:40.200 --> 48:45.600
Bob examined the monoliths taken from Huelco by Roald Frixell in the mid-60s.
48:45.600 --> 48:50.920
They preserve a perfect record of the layers of strata directly above where the artifacts
48:50.920 --> 48:52.240
were found.
48:52.240 --> 48:56.080
Inside, Mike's purported inset.
48:56.080 --> 48:59.840
This is as if you were to take that whole trench and bring it home with you, but you
48:59.840 --> 49:00.920
can't do that.
49:00.920 --> 49:05.360
So you take one slice out of the wall of the trench, glue it to a board, and bring that
49:05.360 --> 49:09.680
back so you can study it just as it was in the outcrop.
49:09.800 --> 49:18.800
We have this length of stabilized section taken from a trench located about 20 to 25
49:18.800 --> 49:22.440
feet from where the fossil remains were found.
49:22.440 --> 49:28.680
There is no question in my mind from a geological point of view that the zone that contains
49:28.680 --> 49:32.680
the artifacts was not incised by a more recent stream.
49:33.080 --> 49:39.560
And to do this, to prove it to ourselves, we have traced that zone from underneath
49:39.560 --> 49:45.240
the overlying, tough bed up to a trench that goes back underneath it, and we've followed
49:45.240 --> 49:50.360
this bed the entire way, and it is not interrupted, not incised by anything.
49:50.360 --> 49:59.280
Therefore, the strata that contain the bifacial tools together with the bones has not been
49:59.280 --> 50:01.440
disturbed at all.
50:01.440 --> 50:08.200
The important point here is that the section that we examine is the section in which the
50:08.200 --> 50:10.000
fossils were found.
50:10.000 --> 50:13.160
It was not eroded, it was not redeposited.
50:13.160 --> 50:18.400
Those samples are right, those tools and everything else are right where they started.
50:18.400 --> 50:23.160
Mike Waters doesn't agree and interprets the stratum differently.
50:23.160 --> 50:28.160
But anytime you have a situation where you have something like, you're following a contact
50:28.200 --> 50:34.240
like this and you've got clay, and then you cross an abrupt contact like this, it's almost
50:34.240 --> 50:38.680
vertical or very high angle, and then you go into something that's completely texturally
50:38.680 --> 50:44.320
different like a sand, it's telling you that something has happened here.
50:44.320 --> 50:49.120
And geologically you have to evaluate this to determine whether you have an erosional
50:49.120 --> 50:55.360
contact there separating them, meaning this is older and this is younger, or is there
50:55.680 --> 50:59.880
some sort of relationship here where this is grating into that.
50:59.880 --> 51:03.960
And as I say, in 73 they thought this was grating into that, but I think you can very
51:03.960 --> 51:09.720
clearly see in this photo that this is a very sharp contact with clay on this side and
51:09.720 --> 51:14.040
sands on that side, and that this contact comes up in here where it's been disturbed
51:14.040 --> 51:15.040
by vegetation.
51:15.040 --> 51:17.920
But very clearly this is younger than that.
51:17.920 --> 51:21.560
Now our interpretation of course is entirely different.
51:21.560 --> 51:27.880
We see it not in terms of continuity of color, but in continuity of bedding.
51:27.880 --> 51:33.120
And therefore we see this as a continuous layer, although changing in texture from
51:33.120 --> 51:35.560
sand to clay.
51:35.560 --> 51:40.640
The monoliths Frixel removed and preserved turned out to be a valuable asset to the
51:40.640 --> 51:42.240
investigation.
51:42.240 --> 51:48.640
They enabled McKinney to compare thin sections of the rock both inside and outside the inset.
51:48.640 --> 51:55.080
We determined from examination of those thin sections that the rock was the same everywhere
51:55.080 --> 51:56.080
we looked at it.
51:56.080 --> 52:02.000
Now had there been an intrusion down into this layer, it would have been evident from
52:02.000 --> 52:04.280
one of the samples that we took.
52:04.280 --> 52:06.320
So we closed the box.
52:06.320 --> 52:11.000
Since different minerals have different optical properties, most rock-forming minerals can
52:11.000 --> 52:13.560
be easily identified.
52:13.560 --> 52:18.800
So I made estimates of the percentage of minerals, and then I looked at the grains
52:18.800 --> 52:21.400
themselves to see what they looked like.
52:21.400 --> 52:22.400
Were they rounded?
52:22.400 --> 52:24.680
Were they angular?
52:24.680 --> 52:30.000
Thin sections were compared from both sides of the purported inset, from within the inset,
52:30.000 --> 52:35.960
directly above where the artifacts were found, and outside the inset, under the volcanic
52:35.960 --> 52:38.040
ash.
52:38.040 --> 52:43.120
If the rock were different, as Mike has claimed, the thin sections would reveal a dramatically
52:43.120 --> 52:46.360
different petrology.
52:46.360 --> 52:51.400
Upon examination, samples from the two areas, while showing minor differences in grain
52:51.400 --> 52:57.700
size, were essentially the same rock, both composed of grains of quartz and feldspar
52:57.700 --> 52:59.320
in a matrix.
52:59.320 --> 53:03.320
And more significantly, the weathering was the same.
53:03.320 --> 53:08.340
If an ancient river had enough energy to carve a deep channel, it would leave telltale evidence
53:08.340 --> 53:13.540
of rough weathering compared to the milder sedimentation under the ash.
53:13.540 --> 53:19.900
Bob found both areas to be weathered by the milder sedimentary action.
53:19.900 --> 53:25.820
That there is no question in my mind, from a geological point of view, that the zone
53:25.820 --> 53:34.300
that contains the artifacts was not incised by a more recent stream.
53:34.300 --> 53:40.340
In summary, bed-eye would go underneath the way at Locoash, and therefore be older than
53:40.340 --> 53:42.340
the way at Locoash.
53:42.340 --> 53:43.340
How much older?
53:43.340 --> 53:44.780
I don't know.
53:44.780 --> 53:49.820
Probably not that much older, because this sediment package could accumulate very quickly.
53:49.820 --> 53:57.100
But this erosional contact indicates very clearly that this post-dates all these other
53:57.100 --> 54:01.300
older fluvial deposits, as well as the way at Locoash.
54:01.300 --> 54:06.420
And so therefore, this is younger than the way at Locoash, the units of what she called
54:06.420 --> 54:11.580
bed C and E that contain the bifacial artifacts.
54:11.580 --> 54:16.420
Did an ancient river carve a channel 11 meters deep through the way at Locoash and the beds
54:16.420 --> 54:23.660
below it, explaining how the artifacts could have been found that deep in the strata?
54:23.660 --> 54:29.060
Or did the volcanic airfall of way at Locoash cover and shroud the man-made artifacts and
54:29.060 --> 54:34.700
butchered animal bones just where they were left by ancient hunters over 250,000 years
54:34.700 --> 54:35.700
ago?
54:35.700 --> 54:42.420
A surprising answer to this crucial question may be found in the single-celled body of
54:42.420 --> 54:46.300
one of nature's tiniest creatures.
54:46.300 --> 54:56.340
Diatom, any of various minute unicellular or colonial algae of the class Basilariophysi,
54:56.340 --> 55:01.780
having salacious cell walls consisting of two symmetrical parts.
55:01.780 --> 55:07.940
Sam van Lendingham is an environmental geologist from Midland, Texas, whose expertise is using
55:07.940 --> 55:12.340
diatoms to date the age of rock strata.
55:12.340 --> 55:18.660
And he can go into a strata, he can take a sample, he can find these little things called
55:18.660 --> 55:26.620
diatoms, which are microscopic, and with his 40-some years of experience, he is able
55:26.620 --> 55:33.140
to tell which diatom this is, when it existed, and when it didn't.
55:33.140 --> 55:39.620
Some of these diatoms, some of the types that are in here, are still living today.
55:39.620 --> 55:41.380
And some of them are not.
55:41.380 --> 55:49.460
Some of them died out over 80,000 years ago, and those are the ones that I'm trying to
55:49.460 --> 55:50.460
find.
55:50.460 --> 55:57.500
First, we need to know, Sam, what are diatoms?
55:57.500 --> 56:07.700
Diatom is a tiny one-celled microorganism, and it's enclosed in a salacious or glassy
56:07.700 --> 56:14.740
skeleton, and it's highly ornate.
56:14.740 --> 56:18.620
An artifact is dropped on the ground near the edge of a stream.
56:18.620 --> 56:23.460
The water level rises, surrounding the artifact with living diatoms.
56:23.460 --> 56:28.260
When the diatoms die, they sink to the bottom and become part of the sediment.
56:28.260 --> 56:32.360
Over time, the sediment builds and covers the artifact.
56:32.360 --> 56:37.580
This process is repeated, and new beds are formed, each containing unique communities
56:37.580 --> 56:39.760
of diatoms.
56:39.760 --> 56:45.440
Long after the water has receded, geologists can determine the age of the various strata
56:45.440 --> 56:49.800
by analyzing the diatoms which are present.
56:49.800 --> 56:56.560
Diatoms have been catalogued very carefully since 1850.
56:56.560 --> 57:03.360
There's over 26,000 of those species that have been identified.
57:03.360 --> 57:08.240
Diatoms have an extensive fossil record, going back millions of years and existing
57:08.240 --> 57:11.780
in various forms through the present day.
57:11.780 --> 57:17.680
Some of these amazing microorganisms have a lifespan of only minutes or hours, yet many
57:17.680 --> 57:22.120
of the species have remained unchanged for millions of years.
57:22.440 --> 57:28.600
Periodically, whole species will die off, never to be seen again in the geologic record.
57:28.600 --> 57:34.360
When those species are found in rock strata, it gives a minimum age for that strata.
57:34.360 --> 57:39.720
Deep in the ground at Huyatlaco, where all the artifacts were found, hundreds of species
57:39.720 --> 57:46.920
of extinct diatoms were discovered, including Nivicula cryptocephala and Cymbelicistula.
57:46.920 --> 57:52.680
According to Dr. Van Lendingham, this means the strata is of Sangamonian age, a minimum
57:52.680 --> 57:55.920
of 80,000 years old.
57:55.920 --> 58:01.800
He found identical groups of these diatoms both inside and outside of Mike's purported
58:01.800 --> 58:03.200
inset.
58:03.200 --> 58:04.840
How can this be?
58:04.840 --> 58:07.480
Yeah, the SAM does great work.
58:07.480 --> 58:11.080
I don't have any problems with diatom work.
58:11.480 --> 58:17.440
The only thing I'm concerned about is redeposition of diatoms from the older deposits into the
58:17.440 --> 58:21.720
younger deposits, which is entirely possible.
58:21.720 --> 58:23.240
That's probably exactly what happened.
58:23.240 --> 58:29.080
You get redeposition of pollen, you get redeposition of ostracod, you get redeposition of diatoms.
58:29.080 --> 58:36.800
That evidence is very weak compared to the geochronological evidence.
58:36.880 --> 58:41.640
Mike says that the reason the same diatoms were found in both places was because the
58:41.640 --> 58:46.880
older ones were washed down and mixed into the newer sediment, an idea that Bob does
58:46.880 --> 58:48.720
not agree with.
58:48.720 --> 58:52.080
And I think that is exactly what's probably happening.
58:52.080 --> 58:54.720
But you would have a mixture in that situation.
58:54.720 --> 59:01.120
My problem is, I just think they got eroded out of here and redeposited into there.
59:01.120 --> 59:05.960
Bob points out that if the older diatoms were mixed in with the newer sediment, we would
59:05.960 --> 59:09.720
expect to find them mixed with some younger diatoms.
59:09.720 --> 59:13.240
This however, is not what Sam found.
59:13.240 --> 59:18.160
If you're going to redeposit material that you're eroding from older beds and deposit
59:18.160 --> 59:24.960
in the younger bed, then you would have a mixture of taxa that belonged to both species.
59:24.960 --> 59:32.040
In other words, the younger beds would be represented with the taxa that do not exist
59:32.040 --> 59:34.400
in the older beds.
59:34.400 --> 59:36.440
And this is not the case.
59:36.440 --> 59:42.880
The diatoms that Sam investigated on both sides of that unconformity were all the same
59:42.880 --> 59:46.900
age and were not mixed with anything else.
59:46.900 --> 59:52.440
So you didn't have younger material being deposited at the same time as you were eroding
59:52.440 --> 59:53.440
the old material.
59:53.440 --> 01:00:04.160
So, yeah, as I say, the diatom evidence, I haven't digested it completely.
01:00:04.160 --> 01:00:10.560
I've seen critiques of the diatom evidence and there's been some harsh criticisms of
01:00:10.560 --> 01:00:12.120
the diatom analyses.
01:00:12.120 --> 01:00:15.080
But I don't want to go into those here.
01:00:15.080 --> 01:00:21.320
Now I told Mike years ago that he better start learning about diatoms because if he doesn't,
01:00:21.320 --> 01:00:23.440
he's going to come back and bite them.
01:00:23.440 --> 01:00:25.640
And he assured me he would.
01:00:25.640 --> 01:00:28.560
He never did.
01:00:28.560 --> 01:00:35.240
Can the identification of diatoms be used with confidence to make scientific determinations?
01:00:35.240 --> 01:00:42.440
Diatom evidence was the key to solving a 1993 murder case in Switzerland.
01:00:42.440 --> 01:00:48.120
And the only forensic evidence introduced in that trial was diatom evidence.
01:00:48.120 --> 01:00:50.440
Case closed, first degree murder.
01:00:50.560 --> 01:00:53.480
And that's the only evidence introduced.
01:00:53.480 --> 01:00:58.680
Mike Wander's inset hypothesis requires a rushing stream with enough force to carve
01:00:58.680 --> 01:01:01.400
a deep channel into the bedrock.
01:01:01.400 --> 01:01:06.400
As a result of this high energy activity, diatoms would have been abraded from the
01:01:06.400 --> 01:01:11.720
older surface and washed down to form the new deposits.
01:01:11.720 --> 01:01:17.320
Both McKinney and Van Lendingham found no evidence of this high energy erosion.
01:01:17.400 --> 01:01:23.240
Instead, they found the rock was formed by low energy erosion from calm, lake water
01:01:23.240 --> 01:01:24.440
type activity.
01:01:27.360 --> 01:01:33.200
This explains why identical communities of diatoms were found both inside and outside
01:01:33.200 --> 01:01:39.160
the purported inset, intact and unmixed with any newer diatoms.
01:01:39.160 --> 01:01:44.640
It also supports what Bob learned from his thin sections, that both sides of the purported
01:01:44.640 --> 01:01:48.360
inset are the same rock with the same weathering.
01:01:49.360 --> 01:01:53.000
There's no inset there.
01:01:53.000 --> 01:01:58.080
Not through the stratigraphy, not through the thin sections, and not through the diatoms
01:01:58.080 --> 01:02:00.080
and any one of which would have been enough.
01:02:00.080 --> 01:02:01.880
But there's no inset there.
01:02:06.520 --> 01:02:12.080
Some have described the enigma at Valsicchio as a trilemma, comprised of archaeology,
01:02:12.080 --> 01:02:16.960
geochronology, and the theory explaining man's arrival in the New World.
01:02:16.960 --> 01:02:21.640
With this trilemma, only two of the three legs can be right.
01:02:21.640 --> 01:02:24.400
What if we are dealing with something very old?
01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:34.760
Well, I really doubt that because it would mean that you have really well-made bifacial
01:02:34.760 --> 01:02:39.200
artifacts like this at a million years.
01:02:39.320 --> 01:02:44.880
If you look anywhere in the world at a million years and what are people making at a million
01:02:44.880 --> 01:02:49.520
years, they're making old-a-wan tools.
01:02:49.520 --> 01:02:53.640
At best, maybe primitive hand axes.
01:02:53.640 --> 01:02:58.600
It just would make no anthropological or archaeological sense that people at a million years in North
01:02:58.600 --> 01:03:02.200
America would be making nice bifacial spear points.
01:03:02.200 --> 01:03:09.040
If they had been, then the rest of human evolution should have taken place in the New World and
01:03:09.040 --> 01:03:12.200
people should have back-migrated into the Old World.
01:03:12.200 --> 01:03:16.120
I know very well that Mike's the expert, and I'm not.
01:03:16.120 --> 01:03:20.160
But on the other hand, I do have a scientific background.
01:03:20.160 --> 01:03:27.320
And I've looked at a lot of data, which compels me to think that this stuff is old.
01:03:27.320 --> 01:03:35.960
The next step planned is that everybody go back next spring, dig again, but this time
01:03:36.040 --> 01:03:44.280
with one single agenda, and that is to determine there's an inset there, yes or no.
01:03:44.280 --> 01:03:49.680
Five years elapsed while Marshall Payne continued his efforts to send a team to Wayatlaco for
01:03:49.680 --> 01:03:52.720
one last dig.
01:03:52.720 --> 01:03:57.320
He hoped this final field trip would provide the evidence he needed to either confirm
01:03:57.320 --> 01:04:02.920
or refute the existence of an inset.
01:04:02.920 --> 01:04:09.320
This inset hypothesis proposed by Dr. Mike Waters was the only obstacle, in Marshall's
01:04:09.320 --> 01:04:14.120
view, to confirming the ancient dates for the collection of spear points discovered
01:04:14.120 --> 01:04:16.200
by archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams.
01:04:16.200 --> 01:04:24.720
The stakes are high, for if validated, these artifacts would be the oldest evidence of
01:04:24.720 --> 01:04:32.400
modern man ever found in the New World, with the potential to rewrite history.
01:04:32.400 --> 01:04:38.000
What follows is a record of the surprising events that brought this epic tale to its
01:04:38.000 --> 01:04:39.000
conclusion.
01:04:39.000 --> 01:04:45.800
Yeah, five years goes by, and the first year we apply for a permit, no permit.
01:04:45.800 --> 01:04:46.800
How come no permit?
01:04:46.800 --> 01:04:49.760
Well, you know, that's Mexico.
01:04:49.760 --> 01:04:51.760
Next year we apply for a permit, no permit.
01:04:51.760 --> 01:04:52.760
How come?
01:04:52.760 --> 01:04:54.960
Well, you know, bureaucracy and all that kind of stuff.
01:04:54.960 --> 01:04:56.880
Well, this is getting old now.
01:04:56.880 --> 01:04:59.120
I'm getting where I don't believe this.
01:04:59.360 --> 01:05:03.680
You know, you put in for the permit, and then they wanted a report, we produced a
01:05:03.680 --> 01:05:06.560
report, and then there wasn't something in there that they wanted.
01:05:06.560 --> 01:05:09.440
So, you know, they have their own bureaucracy.
01:05:09.440 --> 01:05:15.000
The permit application process is just a routine clerical thing.
01:05:15.000 --> 01:05:20.400
There is no reason in my mind why we shouldn't have had a permit.
01:05:20.400 --> 01:05:26.080
So as far as I'm concerned now, after each year, enough is enough.
01:05:26.080 --> 01:05:27.960
There's something rotten in Denmark here.
01:05:27.960 --> 01:05:30.520
There's nothing nasty is going on.
01:05:30.520 --> 01:05:34.160
And so as a consequence, you know, I don't think there's anything sinister.
01:05:34.160 --> 01:05:42.720
I think it's just more of bureaucracy, low priority, and falling through the cracks.
01:05:42.720 --> 01:05:50.720
But what we did get was the permit, not until May, of course, way too late to dig.
01:05:50.720 --> 01:05:55.640
But now I'm told the permit's good for a year, so there's absolutely nothing on the
01:05:55.640 --> 01:05:58.120
planet that could possibly prevent the dig.
01:05:58.120 --> 01:06:02.200
We did get our permit finally that one year, but it was too late to go in the field.
01:06:02.200 --> 01:06:03.800
The reservoir was up.
01:06:03.800 --> 01:06:08.520
And then the next year when we're ready to go, there's a drug war raging.
01:06:08.520 --> 01:06:15.000
And in addition to that, somebody had built walls, you know, going all the way down from
01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:20.360
that house, slump block walls, they planted trees in the old excavation area.
01:06:20.360 --> 01:06:23.240
There's chain link fence around everything.
01:06:23.240 --> 01:06:26.360
I mean, they're actually intruding into federal property.
01:06:27.560 --> 01:06:30.920
Around March or so, I get three photographs.
01:06:32.440 --> 01:06:39.160
And the three photographs are of a house built on the bluff by the site, just above it.
01:06:39.160 --> 01:06:46.040
And the whole site was landscaped, trees planted, bushes, walls and fences around it.
01:06:46.040 --> 01:06:47.320
And Mike says, that's it.
01:06:48.280 --> 01:06:48.840
Can't dig.
01:06:50.360 --> 01:06:51.640
He's out of patience.
01:06:51.640 --> 01:06:53.000
He's going to wind this thing up.
01:06:53.640 --> 01:06:55.960
He already knows enough to finish this thing up.
01:06:55.960 --> 01:06:59.400
And there wasn't that much evidence we could have got out of a dig anyway.
01:07:00.360 --> 01:07:04.200
And really, even if we could have gone back, I mean, it was really unfortunate that
01:07:04.920 --> 01:07:06.680
that we couldn't go back.
01:07:06.680 --> 01:07:09.880
What could we have really have gotten if we went back?
01:07:09.880 --> 01:07:12.760
If you would have got lucky and you did some archaeological digging,
01:07:12.760 --> 01:07:15.080
you might have gotten an artifact in place, perhaps.
01:07:15.720 --> 01:07:21.960
But there was no way to obtain a geochronological age for that younger material,
01:07:21.960 --> 01:07:23.640
for the material from Waiatlaco.
01:07:24.200 --> 01:07:27.880
Later, I found out the two of the specific reasons we didn't have a permit
01:07:28.520 --> 01:07:30.520
turned out to be not true, just lies.
01:07:31.320 --> 01:07:32.840
I just didn't believe it.
01:07:32.840 --> 01:07:36.680
So I sent Neil down to see if anybody that I knew could dig this thing out.
01:07:36.680 --> 01:07:37.160
It was him.
01:07:38.200 --> 01:07:42.040
And he proceeded to set up appointments and had his video camera with him,
01:07:42.040 --> 01:07:43.320
ready to tape the interviews.
01:07:44.280 --> 01:07:49.160
And he had a couple of very, very eminent archaeologists
01:07:50.200 --> 01:07:52.520
ready to look right into the camera and say,
01:07:53.320 --> 01:07:54.280
Marshall got lied to.
01:07:59.240 --> 01:08:01.800
I went to Mexico on the behalf of Marshall Payne
01:08:02.840 --> 01:08:10.680
to find out why permits to excavate Valsalquio had not been forwarded to Mike Waters.
01:08:10.840 --> 01:08:12.840
I'm a dirt archaeologist.
01:08:12.840 --> 01:08:14.840
My training was in Mexico.
01:08:14.840 --> 01:08:17.320
I worked for the Mexican government quite a few years.
01:08:17.320 --> 01:08:19.320
I was married to Miss Mexico.
01:08:20.280 --> 01:08:25.320
And so I'm very involved in the culture.
01:08:26.840 --> 01:08:28.840
He is a very trusted friend.
01:08:28.840 --> 01:08:32.840
I know he never exaggerates or lies or anything like that.
01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:36.520
I knew what he found he would report to me accurately.
01:08:36.520 --> 01:08:39.560
I had four interviews planned and set up for this trip.
01:08:40.920 --> 01:08:48.440
Of those four interviews, one of my colleagues and one of my best friends died two days before I arrived.
01:08:49.960 --> 01:08:51.000
That was strange enough.
01:08:52.120 --> 01:08:59.960
But upon arriving with the other three, I was informed that they were not allowed to give me an interview.
01:09:01.160 --> 01:09:05.160
I was told, if you had been here a few weeks ago, we'd have been here a few weeks ago.
01:09:05.160 --> 01:09:07.160
If you had been here a few weeks ago, we could have done the interview.
01:09:07.160 --> 01:09:11.160
But now I'm prohibited from doing so.
01:09:11.160 --> 01:09:13.160
In another case, I had set up for an interview.
01:09:13.160 --> 01:09:19.160
And when I arrived, I found out that he's traveled out of state.
01:09:19.160 --> 01:09:23.160
So all we could do is communicate by telephone and email.
01:09:23.160 --> 01:09:29.160
Though he readily admitted that all the permits had been given.
01:09:29.160 --> 01:09:31.160
He was very defensive.
01:09:31.160 --> 01:09:33.160
They hadn't excavated because they couldn't.
01:09:35.160 --> 01:09:37.160
The third interview simply did not appear.
01:09:37.160 --> 01:09:39.160
Nor could I establish contact.
01:09:39.160 --> 01:09:45.160
The four that I planned that had agreed to meet with me, one had died.
01:09:45.160 --> 01:09:51.160
And the other three had stonewalled in one way or another.
01:09:51.160 --> 01:09:57.160
These people have been ordered not to grant me an interview.
01:09:57.160 --> 01:09:59.160
Who would benefit from this cover-up?
01:09:59.160 --> 01:10:01.160
The cover-up was so obvious.
01:10:01.160 --> 01:10:03.160
I had several phone calls.
01:10:03.160 --> 01:10:07.160
But one phone call was far stranger than all the others.
01:10:07.160 --> 01:10:09.160
I answer, hello, how are you?
01:10:09.160 --> 01:10:11.160
I'm fine.
01:10:11.160 --> 01:10:13.160
Where are you?
01:10:13.160 --> 01:10:15.160
I said, I'm in Puebla.
01:10:15.160 --> 01:10:17.160
To whom am I speaking?
01:10:17.160 --> 01:10:19.160
A friend of a friend.
01:10:19.160 --> 01:10:21.160
Have you investigated Mario's death?
01:10:21.160 --> 01:10:25.160
I haven't finished that investigation yet.
01:10:25.160 --> 01:10:27.160
But I'll be glad to tell you the results.
01:10:27.160 --> 01:10:29.160
I'll be glad to tell you the results.
01:10:29.160 --> 01:10:31.160
If you give me your telephone number.
01:10:31.160 --> 01:10:33.160
Well, they didn't fall for that.
01:10:33.160 --> 01:10:35.160
I said, I will call you back.
01:10:35.160 --> 01:10:41.160
He said, they know who you are, where you are, and when you're going to leave.
01:10:41.160 --> 01:10:43.160
I said, fine.
01:10:43.160 --> 01:10:45.160
Who are they?
01:10:45.160 --> 01:10:49.160
And he said, you know who they are.
01:10:49.160 --> 01:10:55.160
Well, all I can say is you've got to realize how high up this had to come from.
01:10:55.160 --> 01:11:01.160
So in my mind, Mexicans had nothing to do with squashing this stuff.
01:11:01.160 --> 01:11:05.160
Somebody didn't want that dig, Doug.
01:11:05.160 --> 01:11:09.160
Even though Neil hit a wall of silence in his investigation of the permits,
01:11:09.160 --> 01:11:15.160
he did make an important discovery that could shed light on a 40-year-old mystery.
01:11:15.160 --> 01:11:20.160
For years, people have asked the question, where are Cynthia's artifacts?
01:11:20.160 --> 01:11:24.160
Where are the artifacts from Valsequeo?
01:11:24.160 --> 01:11:31.160
She was working under a permit that these artifacts belonged to the Museo Nacional in Mexico City,
01:11:31.160 --> 01:11:33.160
where some of them work.
01:11:33.160 --> 01:11:39.160
And so when she left, she deposited these along with the bone at the museum.
01:11:39.160 --> 01:11:42.160
And when she went back to study, they were all gone.
01:11:42.160 --> 01:11:45.160
They've never been seen since.
01:11:47.160 --> 01:11:50.160
I think I have finally resolved that issue.
01:11:50.160 --> 01:11:56.160
We have replicas of the artifacts. They're in the Smithsonian.
01:11:56.160 --> 01:11:58.160
But what about the originals?
01:11:58.160 --> 01:12:02.160
You see, Lorenzo had confiscated them.
01:12:02.160 --> 01:12:05.160
He had them in a showcase.
01:12:05.160 --> 01:12:08.160
There are many witnesses who saw them in that showcase,
01:12:08.160 --> 01:12:12.160
and they were proclaimed at being 35,000 years old.
01:12:12.160 --> 01:12:18.160
In the 84 earthquake in Mexico City, that building collapsed.
01:12:18.160 --> 01:12:24.160
And when they shoveled it out, of course, it had been also a warehouse.
01:12:24.160 --> 01:12:27.160
There were artifacts scattered everywhere.
01:12:27.160 --> 01:12:32.160
And they were simply scooped up into boxes and put into boxes.
01:12:32.160 --> 01:12:38.160
And if you can imagine the old Indiana Jones warehouse that you see in the movies,
01:12:38.160 --> 01:12:42.160
this is the kind of warehouse with shelves collapsing, artifacts spilled everywhere.
01:12:42.160 --> 01:12:45.160
They're just picked up. They're put in masks. They're cleaning up.
01:12:45.160 --> 01:12:48.160
They're going to have to tear this building out.
01:12:48.160 --> 01:12:49.160
And they're mixed.
01:12:49.160 --> 01:12:53.160
All those artifacts were shipped to another warehouse.
01:12:53.160 --> 01:12:59.160
It's a warehouse that is on no street, has no address, has no signs on the front.
01:12:59.160 --> 01:13:07.160
And to get to the building, you have to drive and jump the curve,
01:13:07.160 --> 01:13:14.160
drive across grass, and arrive at the warehouse, which has no name on it.
01:13:14.160 --> 01:13:19.160
It's openly hidden. Nobody would know it's there.
01:13:19.160 --> 01:13:21.160
There is no access.
01:13:21.160 --> 01:13:24.160
Very interesting place.
01:13:24.160 --> 01:13:28.160
I made friends with the warehouse man, and he said,
01:13:28.160 --> 01:13:30.160
Sure, come any time.
01:13:30.160 --> 01:13:36.160
And when I arrived, he said, Neil, who have you been talking to?
01:13:36.160 --> 01:13:38.160
I said, Nobody. Why?
01:13:38.160 --> 01:13:43.160
He said, The authorities want to come and shut you down.
01:13:43.160 --> 01:13:47.160
They do not want you looking for those artifacts.
01:13:47.160 --> 01:13:52.160
Needless to say, arrangements were made, and we searched.
01:13:52.160 --> 01:13:59.160
However, the next day, the warehouse was full of hierarchy,
01:13:59.160 --> 01:14:03.160
looking for me, wanting to see what I had looked at.
01:14:03.160 --> 01:14:14.160
The only people that knew of that trip was that warehouse man and an American.
01:14:14.160 --> 01:14:19.160
I believe that the American had to have tipped off authorities
01:14:19.160 --> 01:14:23.160
to create a great concern on their behalf.
01:14:23.160 --> 01:14:27.160
And you know, ironically,
01:14:27.160 --> 01:14:34.160
we are looking for very possibly the most important artifacts in the world.
01:14:34.160 --> 01:14:35.160
And where are they?
01:14:35.160 --> 01:14:42.160
They're in an unnamed, unaddressed, undesignated warehouse,
01:14:42.160 --> 01:14:51.160
where they are mixed in with millions of other artifacts among thousands of boxes.
01:14:51.160 --> 01:14:54.160
And nobody with the tenacity to sort through it.
01:14:54.160 --> 01:15:01.160
And how convenient, because there's a lot of people who don't want to sort through it.
01:15:01.160 --> 01:15:07.160
When you have breakthroughs in science, any science,
01:15:07.160 --> 01:15:15.160
like I'm purporting happened to Valsicchio, a lot of people suffer.
01:15:15.160 --> 01:15:18.160
The first thing they got is peer problems.
01:15:18.160 --> 01:15:21.160
The second thing they got is funding problems.
01:15:21.160 --> 01:15:25.160
And the third thing they might be looking for is another job.
01:15:25.160 --> 01:15:32.160
Vicky goes to Africa and demonstrates that man's over a million years old.
01:15:32.160 --> 01:15:36.160
And he's a hero, he's cited in all the textbooks.
01:15:36.160 --> 01:15:40.160
And then he goes to Calico site in California.
01:15:40.160 --> 01:15:46.160
And there he demonstrates man to be 200,000 years old.
01:15:46.160 --> 01:15:49.160
He's laughed off the stage.
01:15:49.160 --> 01:15:53.160
I keep remembering the story that George Carter told me many years ago.
01:15:53.160 --> 01:15:58.160
When he got out of college, his first job was as a curator or such
01:15:58.160 --> 01:16:04.160
at the Museum of Man in San Diego, where he's from.
01:16:04.160 --> 01:16:06.160
And things are going along okay.
01:16:06.160 --> 01:16:10.160
And he told me that one day at lunch, he stood up and announced
01:16:10.160 --> 01:16:13.160
that he had some pretty darn good evidence
01:16:13.160 --> 01:16:19.160
that man was in the Western Hemisphere 50,000 years ago.
01:16:19.160 --> 01:16:22.160
Shortly after that, George was looking for another job.
01:16:22.160 --> 01:16:26.160
He got his butt fired, fired.
01:16:26.160 --> 01:16:31.160
This is what I'm talking about when I mention the dark side of archeology.
01:16:31.160 --> 01:16:34.160
This is kid stuff, but kids with power.
01:16:34.160 --> 01:16:38.160
And finally he wrote me, he says, oh, well, we can't do your article on way at Lacko
01:16:38.160 --> 01:16:40.160
because the manuscript got lost.
01:16:40.160 --> 01:16:43.160
It fell down behind the file cabinet.
01:16:43.160 --> 01:16:47.160
Before the finding of Clovis Mann,
01:16:47.160 --> 01:16:52.160
we believe that man is in the Americas several thousand years ago.
01:16:52.160 --> 01:16:57.160
And we have the breakthrough of Clovis, of the Clovis finds,
01:16:57.160 --> 01:17:04.160
and all of a sudden we have man stretching back into time 10,000 years before that.
01:17:04.160 --> 01:17:06.160
This is simply another breakthrough.
01:17:06.160 --> 01:17:13.160
All of a sudden now we push it back, but it's a big one, 400,000 years.
01:17:13.160 --> 01:17:16.160
Now, are these artifacts that old?
01:17:16.160 --> 01:17:18.160
We don't know.
01:17:18.160 --> 01:17:22.160
So it's real important to go down and find out because if they are that old,
01:17:22.160 --> 01:17:26.160
then that's going to change the picture of the evolution of humanity
01:17:26.160 --> 01:17:29.160
throughout the whole world.
01:17:29.160 --> 01:17:35.160
That leaves us with a possibility of humans being in the Western Hemisphere
01:17:35.160 --> 01:17:38.160
400,000 years ago.
01:17:38.160 --> 01:17:41.160
One guy at the Smithsonian asked me one time, he says,
01:17:41.160 --> 01:17:44.160
well, if they've been here that long, where's all the corroborating evidence?
01:17:44.160 --> 01:17:48.160
Where's the pottery and all that kind of stuff and the tools?
01:17:48.160 --> 01:17:56.160
And my reaction was, well, if you'll dig down 10 feet to look for something 10,000 years ago,
01:17:56.160 --> 01:18:02.160
when's the next time you're going to dig down 400 feet to find something that was 400,000 years ago?
01:18:02.160 --> 01:18:10.160
In Indonesia, we have the Hobbit people, 3 foot tall, 800,000 years.
01:18:10.160 --> 01:18:16.160
I mean, these dates are not unheard of. They're simply ignored.
01:18:16.160 --> 01:18:20.160
I want to remind you of the Cactus Hill site in Virginia.
01:18:20.160 --> 01:18:26.160
With a man digging with a crew, was looking for a clover site, and by God he found it.
01:18:26.160 --> 01:18:29.160
And that should have satisfied him and it did.
01:18:29.160 --> 01:18:32.160
And it just dawned on him, well, we're right here, why not dig a little further?
01:18:32.160 --> 01:18:37.160
And he did. And he found pre-clovis artifacts.
01:18:37.160 --> 01:18:40.160
Never would have looked a couple of years before that.
01:18:40.160 --> 01:18:42.160
Wouldn't have thought about it.
01:18:42.160 --> 01:18:48.160
Look at the Gobekli Tepe site in southeastern Turkey,
01:18:48.160 --> 01:18:52.160
dated 11,500 years ago by the German archaeologists.
01:18:52.160 --> 01:18:55.160
Nobody doubts the date.
01:18:55.160 --> 01:19:00.160
There are times for a number of major glaciations,
01:19:00.160 --> 01:19:07.160
whereby people could walk from Siberia over to Alaska and then down to Wayanlako.
01:19:07.160 --> 01:19:18.160
If a major glaciation 12,000 years ago allowed, purportedly, the Clovis people to walk across from Asia to Alaska and then south,
01:19:18.160 --> 01:19:25.160
why not other earlier major glaciations allowing people to do the same thing?
01:19:25.160 --> 01:19:28.160
Plenty of opportunities for that to have happened.
01:19:28.160 --> 01:19:36.160
And now that archaeology is beginning to realize that Homo erectus was capable of things they never thought they were capable of,
01:19:36.160 --> 01:19:42.160
why not look at Wayanlako and say, gee, maybe they were here 400,000 years ago,
01:19:42.160 --> 01:19:49.160
and like Cactus Hill, if we use that thinking, we'll discover all kinds of things that we never thought were possible before.
01:19:49.160 --> 01:20:00.160
But let me talk a little about, to me, was the turning point in my own feelings on what's going on down there.
01:20:00.160 --> 01:20:04.160
Because I went along with it, I went along with it, and I went along with it.
01:20:04.160 --> 01:20:08.160
But one time Mike said this to me.
01:20:09.160 --> 01:20:12.160
It's virtually verbatim.
01:20:12.160 --> 01:20:16.160
He said, Marshall, I don't care what the evidence is.
01:20:16.160 --> 01:20:19.160
I cannot believe the old dates.
01:20:19.160 --> 01:20:26.160
Because they refute everything that's known about archaeology and anthropology.
01:20:26.160 --> 01:20:32.160
He says, I could never bring myself to believe those old dates.
01:20:32.160 --> 01:20:35.160
Well, I don't know where he learned his science,
01:20:35.160 --> 01:20:40.160
but it sure is totally different from where I learned my science.
01:20:40.160 --> 01:20:45.160
To say I'm not going to believe anything, regardless of what the evidence is,
01:20:45.160 --> 01:20:50.160
is probably the most anti-scientific statement I've ever heard in my life.
01:20:50.160 --> 01:20:58.160
If the scientists didn't understand that they got to stop with their old beliefs and follow the evidence,
01:20:58.160 --> 01:21:04.160
where would progress ever come from in the last 5,000 years of science as we think of it?
01:21:04.160 --> 01:21:07.160
It wouldn't be there.
01:21:07.160 --> 01:21:16.160
I got into this thing 14 years ago thinking I'd spend 2 or 3 months, maybe $1,000 or so.
01:21:16.160 --> 01:21:21.160
It turned out to be 14 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
01:21:21.160 --> 01:21:29.160
And I want the viewer to understand that I never did and never will expect $1 return for that.
01:21:29.160 --> 01:21:35.160
We know that early man made these artifacts, but we don't know when.
01:21:35.160 --> 01:21:43.160
Different tests have given a range of ages from 35,000 years to as much as 500,000 years.
01:21:43.160 --> 01:21:49.160
The science behind all the tests seems to agree that they are at least older than the 12,000 years
01:21:49.160 --> 01:21:54.160
deemed possible by conventionally accepted theory.
01:21:54.160 --> 01:22:00.160
I can't claim to have proof, but I can claim to have very strong evidence.
01:22:00.160 --> 01:22:06.160
And the evidence is strong enough to suggest that in the future,
01:22:06.160 --> 01:22:13.160
those looking at early man consider this evidence, that people were maybe here 400,000 years ago,
01:22:13.160 --> 01:22:16.160
not 12 or 20,000 years ago.
01:22:16.160 --> 01:22:19.160
So the evidence ought to speak for itself.
01:22:19.160 --> 01:22:23.160
You've got a case here of evidence versus belief.
01:22:23.160 --> 01:22:28.160
My hope is that the belief will be set aside and people will just look at the evidence.
01:22:28.160 --> 01:22:36.160
And that may very possibly lead to exciting discoveries about the history of man.
01:22:36.160 --> 01:22:39.160
Isn't that archaeology's job?
01:23:19.160 --> 01:23:22.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:22.160 --> 01:23:25.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:25.160 --> 01:23:28.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:28.160 --> 01:23:31.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:31.160 --> 01:23:34.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:34.160 --> 01:23:37.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:37.160 --> 01:23:40.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:40.160 --> 01:23:43.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:43.160 --> 01:23:46.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:46.160 --> 01:23:49.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:49.160 --> 01:23:52.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:52.160 --> 01:23:55.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:55.160 --> 01:23:58.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:23:58.160 --> 01:24:01.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:01.160 --> 01:24:04.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:04.160 --> 01:24:07.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:07.160 --> 01:24:10.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:10.160 --> 01:24:13.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:13.160 --> 01:24:16.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:16.160 --> 01:24:19.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:19.160 --> 01:24:22.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:22.160 --> 01:24:25.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:25.160 --> 01:24:28.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:28.160 --> 01:24:31.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:31.160 --> 01:24:34.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:34.160 --> 01:24:37.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:37.160 --> 01:24:40.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:40.160 --> 01:24:43.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
01:24:43.160 --> 01:24:46.160
I'm going to go back to the beginning.