Only one date pulled at 14,500 years so far, a thousand years before Pre-Clovis settlement. That would mean settlement before the land bridge.

Yes, and there are other intriguing finds in South America also pointing towards a pre-Clovis culture. I think there is far more to be discovered than most people realize. I'm not going to go full Graham Hancock, but there's more to things like the Olmecs than I think we fully appreciate.

https://texaspbs.org/shows/stones-are-speaking/

aalan94 said:

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Yes, and there are other intriguing finds in South America also pointing towards a pre-Clovis culture. I think there is far more to be discovered than most people realize. I'm not going to go full Graham Hancock, but there's more to things like the Olmecs than I think we fully appreciate.

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Never understood the certainty that some historians seem to have about dates. The whole there can't be anything older than this because we haven't found it never made sense to me.

14000 years is a long time for stuff to decay and fall apart, especially when you're building with mud and straw.

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Yes, and there are other intriguing finds in South America also pointing towards a pre-Clovis culture.

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It's been pretty well established the Clovis culture wasn't first, there's a place north of Georgetown I think call Friedkin that has thousands of well documented Pre-Clovis artifacts.
The White Sands footprints & some of the South American sites push the dates back to 20K+, which I in my opinion is more likely.

Personally, I think a bunch of archeologists pushing stuff like "Megafauna died because of climate change" and "It was impossible for people to move south because of ice" theories are crazy.
Those paleoindians were expert hunters & overkilled, wiping out the majority of North American megafauna. They were also a people who roamed widely & constantly. They shared our natural human desire for exploration, for more & better resources. The Polynesians that went back & forth between South America are proof of that.

Aust Ag said:

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What does this mean?

Most archaeologists in the Middle East are uncomfortable with 14C dates for these and many other reasons.

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I'm not sure what you're asking. But the majority of archaeologists who work in the ME do not accept carbon 14 dates from the Middle Bronze Age and earlier. They can prove that the dates are too "old" by about 100-150 years starting around 1350 BC and the 14C dates get further off exponentially as one goes further back in time.

14C dates are nevertheless still referenced for at least two major reasons:

1. 14C provides relative dates. That is, even if you don't trust the absolute date provided by 14C, the assumption is that two finds with identical 14C dates are, in fact, of the same date, whatever that date is.

2. Frequently the 14C date is the only date available in the ME, so archaeologists will use it for lack of any other dating available.

No one is sure why the 14C dates start getting whacky. Lots of papers have been written about it and theories thrown out, but it's difficult if not impossible to pinpoint the precise cause.

One problem with 14C dating is to ensure that the right object is being dated. Objects without carbon obviously cannot be dated. So, in that situation, archaeologists will date other objects with carbon that are found in situ with the object that they want to date. Several problems exist with that approach, however:

1. One is "old wood". The wood found next to an object may be hundreds of years older than that object.

2. Another problem is intermixing archaeological layers. Just because an object with carbon is found next to an object that one wants to date does not mean that they were deposited at the same time. An object from 1400 BC is almost 3500 years old. All kinds of environmental and man-made events can have mixed objects at the site.

A plethora of additional problems exist with 14C dating that everyone just kind of ignores.