Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 380: Chopping Up A Buffalo With Clovis Points

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Ep. 380: Chopping Up A Buffalo With Clovis Points · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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• 2:20
  Speaker 1: what's annoying. It's yesterday. My wife comes in the house.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: First thing out of her mouth, I heard you heard
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: you don't have a very good grip strength. First thing
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: that that was the So she ran into a couple
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: of guys before she saw me. That was her number
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: one takeaway from our day. It's just something you can
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: work on. Maybe you know I'm holding it's a Jamaar
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: plus by Samson's Preston and tell us about this thing,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: tell us why you have this, and then we'll get
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: into greater detail. Yeah. So that's a device that allows
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: us to measure the strength of your grip. And we
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: have another one in the box there for pinch strength.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And what we want to do when we do tests
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: involving cutting, we're really interested in understanding the tools and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: not so much the butcher using the tools, and so
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: we measure the strength of butchers and their grip strength
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: and their pin strength, so we can control for that
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in our tests. So if we're looking at two different tools,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: we want to make sure that the difference we see
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: is not due to different butchers, but because of the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: two different tools. And what's the highest score you've ever
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: seen throwing on this? It might have been yesterday really
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: with John I think you got into the sixties. He
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: just edged Clay and I out. Everybody introduced themselves Real
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Quick Spencer, Spencer new are Thy host media Trivia. I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: was part of the experiment yesterday. I'm met in air
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and I'm an archaeologist at Kent State University. Yeah, Clay
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: nwcom here. Yeah, I was a part of the big
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: fiasco we had yesterday too. I guess we're gonna tell
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: about that. I wasn't sure if we were. Oh, we'll
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: get into that, okay, But I want to settled. I
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: want to explain something about my low score. Ye. Dave Meltzer,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: archaeologist SMBU in Dallas, John Hayes from Hayes Tax from
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the studio, and I also took part in the experiment yesterday.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Why do you got? Why do why are you sometimes
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: an anthropologist and sometimes an archaeologist. Well, so archaeology is
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: within anthropology, and so yeah, my degrees are Actually there's
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: a flow chart. Yeah. Well, there's four subdisciplines, is what
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: there is. Archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and socio cultural anthropology
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: all live under I'll live under the umbrella of anthropology.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: We're all studying humans in one form or another. Is
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: it agreed upon that those are like the four subdisciplines
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of anthropology traditionally? Yeah? Absolutely. Could you go through those again?
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  Speaker 1: Our theology, which is what Mett and I do. We
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: study people in the past. Biological anthropology which looks at
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: human variation human evolution from a physical biological point of view.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Linguistics study language, and socio cultural is looking at culture
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: societies around the world. M I had no idea. Archaeology
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: is the cool one though. All archaeologists are anthropologists, but
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: not all anthropologists are archaeologist. That's exactly right, Okay, So anyhow,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: here's the important part of this whole thing. We had
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: to measure grip strength yesterday because we we'll get into
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: greater details. We butchered an entire buffalo yesterday, fresh dead,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: using stone tools, one of which is laying in front
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: of us right now in my hands are full. I
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: didn't know how bad it was, so I took a shower,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: m battered, yes, full of cuts. Yeah, and I'm gonna
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: get ahead of ourselves for second. To address this one issue.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Archaeological sites, really old Clovis sites, you guys, find what
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: one might deduce would be a knife made from a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: flake that is sharp all the way around it. Yeah,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: all the time. But the Neanderthals are smart and they
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: knew to make a dull side for your finger. Well
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in the Middle Paleolithic sort of the time of the Neanderthals. Yeah,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: they would do what's called backing, and they would chip
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: away one side to to make it dull such that
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: they could rest their hand on it. We don't really
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: see that in on Clovis flakes, um, but they might
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: have been using some sort of leather to protect their
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: hands or something. M hmm. It's gonna eventually emerge that
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the Neanderthals had phones and stuff. One because every day
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: there's a thing we've talked. Every day there's a thing like, oh,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it turns out they were gentle artists, you know, And
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: it turns out they right, they just get like smarter smarter. Well,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, we were able to interbreed with them, so
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: they're still alive and in some sense, I think in
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: about two to of human DNA human genomes, because ste
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't have too much. I came in low, which couldn't
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: explain my little grips, right, I came in sub. I
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: came in like subpar on Neanderthal Uh okay, So we
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: had to do grip strength and I had to go first,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: so I didn't have a technique, and then I was
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: kind of going for like a long right, a long
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: sustained grip and then John got though. Mr high score
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: here just got up and did just like an explosive
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: scrash explow some spam them strength. You've used his technique
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and we'll test it again. A lift that up? Okay,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: got you got into the sixties. Now what number would
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: you be satisfied at? Like forties? What number would you
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: be satisfied with? This time? The strongest grip in the room.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So you want to you want to hit seventy. So
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have to hit test before you do it.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: And you were doing it on the third notch, third notch,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: So I was pretty low yesterday, the lowest. How did
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: you throw up sixty nine on this? Okay, ready, now
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you're gonna hear you see some things you might not
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: want to test again because if you wait too long.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah zero, that's not the sound of redemption. Okay, ready,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: yeah damnit zo set and my hands all caught up
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: from the flint plates. All right, here we go, So
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: try reset and then really hit test and then it'll
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it'll go cool. Wait, you're testing your right hand, which
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: is not your dominant hand. Well, that's part of the problem.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to get I don't know how much
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: people want to hear about it. But I'm I'm I
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: used to be ambidexterous as a kid, so I settled
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: in on some things I do, laugh some things I
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: do right, So you'd really want to, in all fairness,
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  Speaker 1: you'd really want to measure both my hands and make
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  Speaker 1: an average well know, because I make it lower. Do
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: reset and test real quick, really pushing test all right?
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: So ah huh six now you hit spencer. Man, we're
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: doing it in the place you did you good yesterday?
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Didn't see That's the thing, man, if that machine was
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: any good, you'd enter your age in and it'd like
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: palibrate like handicaps. Bison doesn't care how you prolonged. All right,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand up. Is it ready to go? So
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: you guys, you guys didn't stand up to hit it,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: just hit tests reset and and then tests reset and
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: then test okay, reset and then test okay fifty nine
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: point six. I'm gonna make you guys feel real good
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: right now. Hold on, you felt you came in hotter yesterday?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Sixty two two? Who dialing the chords in and stuff?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Training my whole life apparently, Yeah, just squeeze it and
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: you make a girl you got a growl. Well, if
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you hit him with two fists, it'll count sixty. I'm
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: gonna pass this on to my John. Here comes the one.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, sixty one. So you didn't you didn't
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: do as good as you did yesterday. You're come on,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: John seven, strongest man in the room. See, I don't
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: trust this machine. Now, how could my group have gotten
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: so much stronger overnight? It's hey, I think it's a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: lot about technique, I really do. I'll hand that back
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: to you. And what other industries use that, because, no
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: doubt they don't make that for archaeologists. So physical therapy,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: uh in doctors and stuff they'll use to see how
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: people's hands are improving if they were injured. Ergonomics as well,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: so just designing knife handles or steering wheels or all
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: that sort of stuff that you need to grip. That's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: what this kind of machine is for. And you guys
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: have a pinch tester too. We have a pinch tester
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and everyone hates the pinch tester because it's awkward. Yeah,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: it's real awkward. What other kind of when you're doing studies?
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: What other kind of do you ever have? Anything we
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: need to like bite strength or anything like that, or
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: we've never done bite strength it. Um. That would actually
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: be interesting because Neanderthal teeth are worn down because they
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: used their mouths as almost a third hand to grip stuff.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And so we can when we look at the indertal
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: teeth and skeletons. Uh, all of their front teeth are
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: just completely gone because they're holding you know, leather or
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: meat in their teeth, holding the other part of it
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: in their hand, and then they've got a knife in
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: their free hand to cut. So bite strength with the indertals,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: are you deducing that all based upon toothwaar? Yeah, toothwar
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: already all have some video. Oh no, no video. The
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: thing about me is I'm a Neanderthal and this is
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: my uh, here's no very interesting. Here's a no thing
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: we talked about yesterday that I wanted to get your
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: feedback on, and you'd heard of it, but I want
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to hear more of how you guys have heard of it. Um.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: We recently had a Coronado expedition expert on and she
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: had found a number of she'd found a number of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Coronado sites in the US that in preparation for that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: interview I was reading, Um, I can't remember a guy's name.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: He's kind of he's frustrating to read. But he wrote Coronado,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Night of the Pueblos and plane Planes. Yeah, classic volume. Yeah,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: irritating author. It was, yeah, yeah, it's just like he
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: really uh went he went out of his way to
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: be like, well, you see, it wasn't that unusual to
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: come into a village and cut everybody's hand off. You know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: this is you gotta remember the times, right, You're like,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that seems a little excessive even accounting for the times. However, um,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and there were many chroniclers of the expedition who later,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to keep track of who. You know,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: some guy twenty years later he's like, oh and I
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: remember this, and anyhow you can put together a pretty
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: good idea of what went on. But um, of of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: little interest to Coronado experts, but of interest to me.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: As they encounter some bison hunters in the if I
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: remember right, they were on the Yano Esticado the Texas Payhandle,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: and they encounter some bison hunters and they are they
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: have dogs. It's pre horse. They have dogs. Um. They
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: had had no personal contact with Europeans. They remarked. The
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Coronado people remarked on how un blown away they were.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: They asked them, what are you? And then they had
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: described how they would when they're skinning bison. They would
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: sharpen stone tools with their teeth. I had never heard that,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: But you've seen and heard of that. Yeah, I mean
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I've there's all sorts of interesting and unique ways to
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: re sharpened tools or to make tools, and yeah, you
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: can do it, especially on really thin edges. Um does
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: that that's got to show up in the on the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: dental ware of someone. I suppose it just depends on
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: how often you do it. Um. But what do they
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: even mean by sharpened tools of your teeth? Well, I mean,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: we got a flake right here I can demonstrate now.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: But uh, you know, when you've got an edge that's
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: fairly thin, if you just can basically just push off
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a couple of flakes with your teeth, just pushing off
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: those tiny little chips will resharpen that edge and your
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: mouth like you but then you're imagine you're using your
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: eye teeth, but then your mouth is full of well
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I think in the past people would have been used
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to having stuff in their food, and we don't see
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: like teeth getting worn down. Well, a couple of thoughts.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: One is that you ought to see probably micro cracks
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and the enamel if somebody is doing that on a
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: regular basis. The other thing is is that when you
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: have groups that are in areas well. For one thing,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: farmers who are grinding corn and and matats, all sorts
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of mineral matter gets in their food, in their corn,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and it does tend to wear down the molars in
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the back hunter gatherers um that lived on the planes
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: during the Middle Holo scene, when you had just a
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: whole lot of dust blowing, heavily worn teeth as well
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: for the same reason, right, you just got a lot
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of grit in the diet. We were talking yesterday a
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: little bit about um this is also sort of on
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the edge of our primary activity yesterday, but we were talking,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: we were making jokes about that, like me at forty eight,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't have been there. And I know you said,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: like as like the Clovis people's and you said, I
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: guess rightfully. So he said, we don't know because there's
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: not enough. You know, you don't have a bunch of
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: skeletons laying around to determine, to accurately determine like where
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the holes are in sort of the age demographics. But
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: what are what are some thoughts on hunter gatherer life expectancies.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Probably in the forties would be my guess, what is
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: happening to them? Just a lifetime of um being out
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: all the time, having to uh hunt for your meals,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: track down those bison. Those bison that way a hell
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: of a lot more than the one that we were
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: butchering yesterday, even though we were butchering a fairly large animal. Right,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: so you think it was it would have been like
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: a no medical care, Yeah, right, good point. Things that
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: would be like appendicitis, appendicitis, tooth infection, abscess too abscessed tooth.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: There you go. Um, so any number of things. Which
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: is not to say that they were unaware of or
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: lack knowledge of medicinal plants. I mean, one of the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: things that's really striking is that a lot of the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: medicinal plants that we are discovering today we're already known
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: ethnographically uh and could have been known for a very
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: very long time. So while they were quite capable, um,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: there were probably things medical emergencies that would have been
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: simply beyond their ability. I guess it would have been
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: almost a statistical issue too, that by the time you
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: were in your mid forties or whenever, it's just time
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: for something bad to happen, you know what I mean.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: It's just the amount of exposure to physical risk of
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: hunting these big animals, crossing rivers, falling off cliffs. Right,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Disease just just random things, random things, um that you
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: just came on suddenly and you just couldn't cope for
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: any number of reasons, right. I mean, we live very
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: cushioned lives and we've got lots of fail safe and
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: backup systems. There were no backup systems. Is there any
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: way to guess with with ice age hunters? Is there
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: any way to guess when, like what what was a
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: peak reproductive age for females? Uh? I do not know
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the answer to that. But actually, let me add one
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: thing to what I was just saying about how tough
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: life was. One of the things that's come out of
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the recent genomic evidence, the DNA evidence, is that between
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: about sixteen thousand and about thirteen thousand years ago, there
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: was a sixtyfold increase in population of people in the Americas.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: So what that's telling you is that when they got
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: into this new continent, actually things were pretty darn good. Now.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the start value was, you know,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: was it a hundred people and you know multiply that
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: or was it a thousand people? But the fact that
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: that population increased so rapidly in such a relatively short
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: period of time tells you that they were actually quite
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: successful at moving into this new environment. Obviously, things are
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: going to plateau, and again you still have those sort
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: of random events that will come after a lifetime of
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: hard living, but overall, the population was really quite successful.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: The there's a new book uh coming out by a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: historian named Dan Flores, and he has a chapter um
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: called Clovincia the Beautiful, and he has a chapter about
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit about what's known about Clovis and then
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: speculations about Clovis and the mysteries of Clovis. And in
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: there he has a observation that that, you know, a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: theory that I had considered, um, when looking at how
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: quickly the Clovis hunters seem to have been able to
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: colonize new country, you could you bring up this idea
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of why and then I've read what people would say.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: You know, you can't rule out that there was an
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: element of curiosity. Um. Oftentimes you'll see huge migrations of
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: people that are propelled by hunger, propelled by warfare and um,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and you know, and there's not correct me if I'm wrong,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: there's not like evidence of it being warfare propelling the thing.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And he brings up he he talks about these various
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: cases of of known times in the more recent historic
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: record where people have stumbled upon islands say that had
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: never had humans on them. And and so like the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: whalers in from the eight hundreds who would land on
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: these islands and there's no human record on the islands,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and they would talk about literally walking up in and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: lifting birds, plucking birds like fruit from trees, or just
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: being able to walk up, you know, with tortoises, you
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: walk up and simply load them onto the boat. Um.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Animals that couldn't even comprehend what they were. And then
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: you look at a place where you go to Yellowstone Park,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: where it hasn't been there that you've had a hundred
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: year a hundred plus year absence of human hunting on
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that landscape. So only that's only one years of an
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: absence human honey, because not very long. But you can
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: get remarkably close to wildlife there that is not used
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: to human predation. And he throws out this idea that
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: perhaps what propelled you along really quickly is the minute
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: something got hard and you went a few miles yonder
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: there were animals that had never seen a human predator before.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Just keep chasing the dumb ones, and so yeah, like
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: why is you do? You hunt for your while in
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: a place for a while, and ship gets kind of like,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I don't about these guys walking up to me anymore.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Bump along, and then you're back into a place where
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you can just have it pretty easy. And that might
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: explain like why you sped through the continent so quick thoughts, Well,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: a couple of things. I mean, one is is that
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: these are animals. You're coming into a continent where animals
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: have been dealing with some pretty substantial predators for a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: very long time. Right, Mamiths and mastodons have dealt with
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: giant short faced bear, saber tooth cats and the like.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: They're not completely asleep at the evolutionary switch, right, Um,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: they know how to deal with predators and they learned
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: really quickly. Okay, Uh, would that have work for people? Yeah?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I mean I suppose the first person in UM is
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: going to have that advantage. Is that going to pull
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: people from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego? Probably not. Is
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: that going to have some sort of local payoff? Well? Yeah? Possibly.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Resource depression always sets in right as soon as you
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: start hunting. The first day of hunting season. The first
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: gun that goes off, where are all the elk? Right?
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: They're gone? Um? And in the bugle in the bugling
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of the bulls seems to wrap up in a real herd. Yeah. Yeah,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: so animals respond pretty quickly. Um. But back to what
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you said at the outset about curiosity. I mean, one
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: of the things about curiosity is that it's actually an
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: adaptive strategy. And I probably he said this on this
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: show before, but basically, for hunter gatherers is your insurance
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: is not knowing what's going on and available where you are.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: It's knowing where you go next when things get bad, right,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: And so by continually kind of looking over the next
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: hill and just seeing what's out there and knowing where
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: you can go gives you that advantage. So that curiosity
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: actually has a built in adaptive function that works really
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: well for people on a on a completely unknown new landscape.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: So instead of saying he was curious about what was
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: over there, he was scouting. Absolutely absolutely. And you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you got a band, you've got a bunch of teenage
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: boys or girls, just say why don't you going to
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: walk about? Go look over that hill, see what's in
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that next valley, and come back. You know. The other
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: thing is these people weren't looking for a place to
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: settle down. I mean, these were these were They weren't
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: sedentary agricultural people trying to find the most beautiful valley
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: in North America to raise their family, to build a
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: log cabin. Now that's it's absolutely right, Clay and and
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, they're not like sort of
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: fur trappers, you know, going into the Rockies in the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, where they're just you know, coming in grabbing
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: resources and going back out again. They do have to
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: make a living, they do have to raise families. Um,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: but these are as, you say, you know, highly mobile people.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: So we're not seeing evidence that they're spending you know,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: more than a few days at a particular camp site
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: or maybe in the winter a few months, but then
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: they're moving on. Do anthropologists ever consider that there was
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: like any sort of strategic reproduction with ancient humans when
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: a time that like every calorie mattered, that they would
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: do some method like we can't be having babies in
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: December because it's just too hard on the mother's uh
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and and the other folks in camp, So we gotta
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: have our babies in April, May, June. Um. There's a
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: huge complicated literature on that very issue. So you know,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the answer to your question is, yes, anthropolo is just
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: considered it. UM. The other part of the answer is
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: can I give you a detailed, easily digestible UM response? Uh? No, No,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I really can't. Um. We You know, we look at
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: modern day hunter gatherer groups and their demographics, and we
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: can see certain things, UM, like, for example, the critical
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: role of grandparents, right uh. Individuals who are beyond reproductive agent,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: what role do they play in helping families taking some
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: of the um the weight as it were, off of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: mom and dad, especially mom in terms of childcare and
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and contributing beyond their own reproductive years.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: So we do see those kinds of things. What does
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: that look like in a pleistocene situation. Really hard to
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: tell now, didn't the more modern Native Americans, it's documented
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: some of their strategy for for when to have kids.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I was reading about the Shawnees and pretty much they
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: didn't do much pro creating in the early part of
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the year because they didn't want to have babies in
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the winter, and there were they were like times when
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: you were permitted to do that, and it also coincided
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: with war and hunting, like you didn't want to be
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: doing that when you were going hunting either. But yeah,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: but the purpose it was was to have babies during
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: optimal times of the year, but that may have been
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: a much later, much later thing, right, Yeah, we just
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: really don't have any idea about what's going on in
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: in ice age times. Have you ever heard the idea
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: that uh monogamy was born of the fact that uh
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: human females are instead of having like an annual like
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: a once a year breeding time, that it's sort of
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like ever present and there's no outward display of of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: when someone's fertile, and so it would cause a male
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: to need to stay near his partner year round, year round,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: And it couldn't be that you could just be like
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: a bull elk and go hang out with other elk
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: for eleven months out of the year and then sort
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: of like, yeah, but come September, you'll be back at
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the cabin. But it was yeah, I think I read that.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I think it was the physiologist Jared Diamond. Its probably
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: might be a widely held bleep. I think it was
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the physiologist Jared Diamond had written about what might have
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: made um, what might have brought about this, This idea
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of a of a breeding pair human breeding pair that
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: stay together in the same place all the time, you know,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: and that we don't split apart and come back for
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: like breeding season. That actually speaks to the what's called
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the provisioning hypothesis, which is actually proposed by one of
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: my Kent State colleagues, oh and love Joy. And the
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: other half of that hypothesis is that it's not that
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: males are always staying by females. It's that we potentially
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: evolved to be bipedal such that males would have free
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: arms to go get resources for the females and bring
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: them back um, and that way the female can keep
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: track of the kids and take care of them. So
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: monogamy not only is for sort of the mom and
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the dad, but it allows the male to go and
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: get food such that his offspring will have a better
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: chance of surviving. Earlier, you mentioned, uh can somehow it
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: came out I thought would be a great spring off point.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: You'd mentioned like teenage female teenage females that you mentioned
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: that I mentioned just teenagers, right, they got a lot
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: of time on their hands. They're always looking to cause trouble.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Send them off on a walk about. Okay. That brings
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: up with a thing we need to talk about. We
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: covered and we we've discussed multiple times. The footprints found
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: in White Sands National Park. Okay, and I wanna feel
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: free to roam on this one. I mentioned you, Hey,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: what are your thoughts about the footprints, the ancient footprints
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: that they found. You'll have to describe what they're in
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: or whatever. But but a sort of it's not fossilized,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: but whatever the hell the word is for it a
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: very old barefoot footprint. Um. Apparently, uh, this was found
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: relatively recently by a park ranger in White Sands National Park.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: It seems to be that there is a what they
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: determined to be a young female. She seems that she
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: was carrying a child on her hip would periodically set
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: the kid down and pick the kid back up. She'd
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: gone on the lake shore. A mammoth I believe, or
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: masadon crossed her track. Yeah, a ground a giant ground
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: sloth crossed her track. She came back minus the child.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: This is you'll have to go with this, like what Okay?
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Are people getting carried away or not carried away? But
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: that's the story. That is the story. And I mentioned
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: it to you. Story. Yeah, I mentioned it to you.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to say that you rolled your eyes,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: but you you seem to have. You had the sort
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: of a yeah, but look on your face. Okay, So
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: here's the butt. Okay. So the site is in the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: White Sands National Park. That much is correct, Mexico, which
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: is in New Mexico, surrounding the White Sands Missile Range.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Actually it's within, it's sort of embedded within. And I
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: can preface this by saying, we've actually been doing some
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: work on the missile range h and at one point
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: we were literally just a hundred meters or so north
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: of the footprint site. So we wandered over to take
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: a look, and really interesting, Oh yeah, Oh yeah, I've
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: not seen the footprints, find you. And we've actually been
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: excavating in sediments that are the same age as the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: sediments that had produced the footprints. And I think I
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: need to preface all this by saying, Look, the people
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that are working on that site, UM, these are pros.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: They know what the hell they were doing. Um, they
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: know how to identify footprints. I got no question about
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: whether these are footprints. Um. The issue issues really come
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: down to the age of the site. So the site
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: is dated by the investigators between twenty three thousand and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: twenty one years ago, which, if feel remember from our
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: previous conversations, is substantially older than the secure evidence that
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: we have for people in the Americas. Give us around,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: give a quick review of that, which is around fifteen
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and a half fifteen sixteen thousand years ago. Is the okay,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: use the word secure evidence secure because there's always insecure
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: evidence out there that people are claiming. You know, we've
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: got folks here a hundred and thirty thousand years ago.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Just it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. What about Monteverde,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry you buy that one. Oh yeah, that's regarded
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: as assailable. Yeah, well that's the that's the latest, that's
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the oldest one, because that new thing on Columbia right
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: around the snake or Salmon, I can't remember where it is. Yeah,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: well we've got some other sites that are sort of
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: around that fifteen fifteen and a half plus or minus
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: age and cold is how old? Like about thirteen exactly? Alright,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: sow one the site big. It's a big People might
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: be like, yeah, what's the difference, but yeah, no, it's substantial.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: The site is sitting on the floor of an old
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: lake bed okay, old place to seen Lake otaro Um.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: And there's a couple of issues with UM, with the dating,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: and they're I'm going to get to sort of the
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: larger questions around the site. When we look at it
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: and when we're looking at at radio carbon dates, we're
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: looking both at their reliability. If you date something again,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: are you're gonna get the same answer, and we're looking
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: at their validity. Is the answer correct? Okay? What they're
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: dating is um. The common name is ditch grass. The
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: scientific name is rupia. Now rupia photosynthesizes uh dissolved inorganic carbon,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: which is a really fancy way of saying dead carbon.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: If you ingest dead carbon into the system, the dates
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: that you're going to get in return are going to
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: be older than they should be. Okay, So in terms
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: of the issue of reliability, there was a paper that
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: literally just came out yesterday in the journal Geoarchaeology, wherein
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: they took some Rupia seeds from um and the scientific
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: term is not literally seeds, but we're just gonna go
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: with seeds because that makes the most sense in terms
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: of the conversation. They dated um a bunch of rupea
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: seeds from what's known as a lake ball. What happens
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: in these old lakes is that rupea grows in relatively
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: deep water upwards of two meters, and during um these
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: windstorms that will blow the water of the lake um,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: pile it up on one end, drop it down in
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the other. The rupea gets dislodged and gets piled up
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: on the beaches right and and sometimes it forms balls
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: where you just literally have a whole massive rupea seeds.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: They took one of these balls, they divvied it up
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: into portions, and they dated the different portions, and there
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: was a span of fift hundred years Ostensibly, if you're
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: going to date a single event, you ought to get
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: the exact same number, right, So what that's telling you
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: is that lots of different rupea seeds from lots of
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: different ages are tending to get lumped together. So if
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you're but they're not lasting fift hundred years. But wait, then,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: there was a paper that came out three weeks ago
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: in the journal Paternary Research where they actually dated some
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: rupia that had been collected in nineteen forty seven in
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: the same drainage region. And these were modern rupia samples
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: collected in nineteen forty seven radio carbon dated six months ago.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: The radio carbon dates on things that we're growing in
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven came back seventy four hundred years old.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Why because they were ingesting dead carbon Rupia. Rupia is
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: basically sucking up ancient carbon. So the dates that we
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: have of twenty three thousand subtract seventy four hundred, what
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: do you get around fifteen and a half thousand years ago?
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: So in other words, the dating that they're doing, they're
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: dating ancient things that may well be the same age
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: as the footprints, but that doesn't mean they're that old.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Explain how are they associating their rupia with the footprint? Okay,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: you can't date a footprint, right, It's just what's the
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: words it's not? I mean, what what do you call
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: like a because it's not like it's a feature, it's
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: not an artifact. Um But why is it? Why is
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: it still there? I mean, let's say it's a thousand
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: years old, Like, what makes it that the footprint is
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: still there? Because normally you walk along the beach and
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: later in the day your footprint is not there. Okay,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: this is actually another one of the problems and issues
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that I have with this thing is um So footprints
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: are said to have been found over a two thousand
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: year period between twenty three thousand and twenty one years ago. Okay,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: they are found in sediment. And I know this because
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: we were digging in a trench a hundred fifty away
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: in the same deposit. That is rock hard. And when
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: you read the original paper on the footprints, they talk
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: about excavating the footprints with a dirt rated chainsaw. I've
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: done a lot of excavating. I've never excavated with a chainsaw.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: This the stuff is so rock hard to cut it
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: out So my question is not so much how do
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: the footprints get preserved, but how do you find them
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: when you're chainsawing through a block of sediment? Well, how
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: did the first person that found him find him? Anyways,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it must have found him on this roading
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: on the surface. But then they excavated down with their
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: chainsaws and got several layers of these things. It's puzzling
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: as hell to me, and I'd really love to see
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: if footprints are are are preserved in some ways. We
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: have dinosaur tracks, We have all kind of tracks in rock,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: something would have happened, but these are in rock. No,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: these are in sediment. Because the dinosaur tracks usually it's
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: walking in some kind of I don't know mud. Did
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: have did eventually that mud fossilizes? Yeah, yeah, no, it's
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: a puzzle. And these tracks. If you if you went
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: to one of these tracks and you poked it, you'd
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: indent it. I would think so, well, actually, if if
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: you could, because again it's when we were taking sediment
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: samples out of those same deposits, I was literally wailing
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: away with a rock hammer to chip out the dirt.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm just not sure how they found multiple layers
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: couldn't be different that far away. I mean no, because
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: schiologist that was working on the footprints was working with
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: me on the other side of the fence on the
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: missile range and said, this is the deposit in which
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the footprints are found. M But leaving that aside, that
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: you have footprints stacked on top of each other, have
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: different layers, and then I can't quite figure out how
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: they were excavated. And I'd really like to see, you know,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: how these that'll eventually become one would hope. Yeah, apparently
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: there were videos made, so I'm not doubting that they
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: found these things. I just don't understand and how they
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: managed to excavate them in the condition that they're excavated.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And the rupec the rupia does something different than other plants. Well.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: In fact, in that same paper where they dated the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: rupia from seven they dated another plant that had been
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: collected that same year by the same botanists, and it
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: dated to only three hundred years ago. But other things
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: would be more stable. So there's something about that. There's
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: something about there's something about rupia that differentially is taking
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: up this dead carbon that's giving it inflated ages. And
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I interrupted you or didn't give you time to do it.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Why why do they feel that the footprint and the
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: plant our bodies? Oh, well they do, but um, others
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: are skeptical because if you've got, um, let's say, the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: an edge of a lake and you've got people walking
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: on it, or you have one of these big storm
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: events and it washes up a bunch of rupea on
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: a surface and then people walk across that surface, it
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: was deposited. They were both deposited at the same moment,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: but they were both not necessarily well, they were the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: same age, except that rupia is dating older than it should.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: But why, Okay, you find a track, what is it
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: about the vegetation that you're like, I'll date this vegetation. Oh,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: it's the only thing that you can date. Well, it's
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: just on the same lighter, it's on the same layer. Yeah. Yeah,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: So it's not like it was has a footprint over
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: it or something that I mean, is there is it
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: pretty good that that that that their foot was on
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the plant on the plant or well, these are these
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: are just literally layers of these seeds. I think would
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: you say the assumption is that if there was a
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: footprint and on the same layer, because that that's like
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: a capsule of time exactly if there was a rupea
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: growing add one more. Man, I I thought it was that.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: I assumed they were taking it where they could see
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the foot so random though, you know, no, wouldn't well, okay,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: let me let me do that. All of human history
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: would just be a big I'm saying that you have
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: a track. Let's say you have a Let's say imagine
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: there's a piece of seaweed. Yeah, and you stepped on
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and you stepped on it, and then that preserved and
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: you could see where like absolutely this footprint crushed this plant,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and you actually many be like those are friends. Steve
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Ronnell is perfect World and Steve Bronelle's Perfect World actually
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: exists on the coast of British Columbia. There is a
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: site that has thirteen thousand year old footprints where somebody
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: stepped onto vegetation. How do you know those are accurately dated? Uh,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: they're not absorbing dissolved inorganic carbon that plant. That plant. Yeah,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: this is no, this is a tricky plant. A couple
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: other pieces of information, so I've worked out there you're
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: on the floor of an old lake bed. You stand
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: out there. You look around, you think, what the hell
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: would have attracted people to this spot repeatedly over two
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: thousand years? Now, there's nothing out there today. Now that's
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: not to say that there wasn't It was something, It
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: was the marsh or something. Right, Yeah, there's nothing to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: say that there wasn't anything there, you know, fifteen thousand
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: plus years ago or twenty three if you believe the dates,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: which I'm skeptical about. But the other pieces is that
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: people apparently or allegedly or purportedly came here over a
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand year period repeatedly. There's not a single artifact,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: no features, no other evidence of a human presence except
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: their footprints. What were you digging at? We were north
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: of there, and we were testing that same deposit, and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: we were actually taking DNA samples DNA of what the sediment?
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Does sediment have DNA? Oh yeah, but the clay. You're
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: You're into the whole new world. Now, someday these boys
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: are gonna be able to you be able to You'll
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: you'll be able to dig down, get to a certain spot,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: get a scoop, and you'll be like, oh, yeah, there
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: was a thirteen year old male here Okay, well, Steve's
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: going a little bit bit, a little bit farther than
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I would go. But um, so this is work that's
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: actually been done over the last twenty years. In fact,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: you're looking for human DNA and anything anything. It's like
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: anything animals. So um. You know, we've talked about the
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: ice Free Corridor and one of the things that we
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: were able to do with ancient DNA out of lake
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: cores is we were able to detect basically the moment
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: that um animals and plants start occupying this region. Because
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: when you take a lake corp out at the very
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: bottom is just gravel and grit and whatnot, and at
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: a certain point suddenly, boom, you've got you've got mammoth DNA,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: you've got bison DNA. And we use it's called shotgun sequencing,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: where you basically take sediment and you just look to
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: see what is alive in here or what was once
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: living in here that contributed its DNA. We just had
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: a piece last year um UH with a whole series
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: of sites around the Arctic, and we were able to
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: trace mammoth DNA over time and watch the mammoth populations
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: basically shrinking into a small area of the Timer Peninsula
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: of northern Siberia up to around four thousand years ago.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: And we were able to do this not by their bones,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: because bones don't survive long enough. But that's because a
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: mammoth only is going to leave one skeleton behind, but
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: over the course of its lifetime at shedding DNA constantly.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: We could go out to the site where we were
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: butchering that animal yesterday and we could go and take um,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, all you guys were bleeding out there right, Um,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: we could take some of that sediment. We could get
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: DNA out of that sediment, and we'd find bison DNA,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: we'd find nala DNA. That John in his DNA an
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: extraordinary grip strength. Well, let's it that wouldn't degrade over time. No,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Clay is absolutely right. Um d NA uh, you know
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: in your genome three point two billion base pairs right
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: by the time it gets into the archaeological record or
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the geological record. And mind you, DNA has been recovered
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: from upwards from sites upwards of two million years old. No, really, seriously,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I would not Steve, I would not lie to you,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: but just not like horribly degraded. It's terribly degrade recognizable.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: That that actually makes it identifiable as ancient DNA, because
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: ancient DNA in general is no more than about a
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: hundred letters long. If you see a string of DNA
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: letters that are thousands and thousands of letters long, you
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: know that somebody in the lab sneezed and your sample okay.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: But if it's anywhere you know, fifty plus or minus uh,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: that's ancient DNA. And what you have to do, and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: this is a this is a very analytically challenging thing,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: as you've got to take all those little fragments of
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: DNA and figure out what is the sequence here, and
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: then map that sequence to a reference genome which will
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: tell you it's mammoth, it's bison, it's something else. Uh.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of the work that's done in
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: ancient DNA, ancient environmental DNA is is actually the term
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: UH involves compiling reference sequences so that when you're doing
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: the shotgun work where you're looking at all the DNA
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: fragments within a sample of sediment, you can match it
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: up with whatever might have been out on that landscape.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: One thing I appreciate the about the work you guys
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: do is that. Uh, I mean, just I guess this
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: is part of the scientific process in general. Is you
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: have you you engage in work. Often this isn't gonna
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: yield the answer, But you're developing a tool m you
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like you're almost started laying the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: groundwork for you're sort of building a tool kit or
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: laying the groundwork for probably maybe the next generation to
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: really enjoy the benefits of Well, that's exactly right. Um,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: but that's how you push things forward as well. Um,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: this is research, um, pure research. What we do. I mean,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: let's be honest, we're archaeologists. What we do is useless, um,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily meaningless. Um. We learned things, and
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: in the process of learning things, we also learned what
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: we don't know. And then we push forward again to
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: try and figure out, Okay, how do we remove that
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: piece of ignorance? What is the greatest defense of like
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: your job. If someone's like, oh, what you do is useless, well,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I think people are fundamentally interested in who we are
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: and how we got here. Um, and I well recognize that.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: You know, my son is a doct he's a real doctor.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: He's an empty I'm just a PhD. And so I'm
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: not gonna cure cancer. I'm not the guy that you're
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: going to call on the airplane when somebody gets sick.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: You know, you're gonna have to wait twelve thousand years
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: and then I can help you. Um. But I do
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: think that, um, you know, in in our modern world,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I think people do appreciate where we've been, um, the
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: history of the human species, um, because it's a fascinating
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: history and it tells us a hell of a lot
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: about who we are today. Yeah, it's you'd wind up
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: in the same landscape. Is if you said, why do
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: This might seem like a stretch, but bear with me.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: You might be why do musicians matter? Why do visual
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: artists matter? Be like, uh, the information inspires people who yeah,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: causes you to ask questions? Yeah, why the podcast matter?
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, why are people listening to meat Eater? Why
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: why am I getting all these emails and thank you
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: by the way from your listeners pictures of things they
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: found in their yard. Well, yes, there's a lot of
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: that fundamental, fundamental question that everyone has, whether they realize
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: it and have consciously articulated before it is who are
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: we and where do we come? From because that that
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: gives us reason justification. I mean, there's so much philosophical
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: fodder that influences whether we make electric cars, or whether
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: we go to war, or whether we try to cure cancer,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: or whether we try to say that human life has
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: value based upon deep history of who we word, where
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: we came from. Spencer new Well, that's why, um, I
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: wish I had been an ice age hunter. And when
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: they invent time travel, I want to have a very
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: educated guess about where I want to land and win.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: That's the whole reason. Yeah, So for him, it's a
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: practical issue. I don't want to make a horrible mistake.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: See I could have said like, oh sweet White Sands
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: missile range years ago, there I am and should have
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: listened to melt Hey can I can I ask him
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: a question that has to do with the broader study
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: of archaeology. So, so you, in your status in the
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: anthropology archaeology archaeology world, like you questioning the validity of
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: this work? Is that? Is that? Okay? How would you
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: feel if someone said that about your work? Is this
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: just part of the is you know? What does Steve say?
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Cynicism is the chastity of the intellect. Cynicism, skepticism is
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: the chastity of the intellectual. Did you invent that some Spanish?
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not just aenuine question. No, it's it's an absolutely
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: fair question. And met and and I can speak to
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: that because we just had to respond to a criticism
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: of a paper we published. Look and in academia the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: currency uh to say that to your face, the guy
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: who read about I'm sorry inside inside um, ideas are
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the currency, right. This is not the business world where
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: you know who makes the most money and who dies
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: with the most toys or anything. This is all about ideas,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and ideas are open season. My ideas, your ideas, everybody's ideas.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: And so Mett and I were just just published a
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: paper in which we responded to a critique of the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: work that we had published. Me and you want to
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: give a quick Yeah, we actually talked about this in
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: January when I was here. Who was the idea that
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Clovis points are kind of like these automatic mammoth killers, um,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: and that they were designed that's what they were for
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: to kill big Proboscidians. And our research question that and
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem to hold up um, But some colleagues of
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: ours wanted to sort of roll the ideas around and
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: question that, and we responded and with evidence. And that's it.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I mean everything we do, do they call you give
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: your heads up? Not in this case. Yeah. And is
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: there a little animosity in there? No, Man, Um, someone's
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: gonna like, if a journalist is gonna do a hit
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: piece on you, they might call you at the last
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: minute to give you a chance to respond. There's not
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: that he doesn't say, like, hey, man, you know you're
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: gonna open your email tomorrow. I'm gonna kind of attack
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: your your last you know, the last two years of
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: your life. Well. I think the point though, is everything
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: we're doing is in some way wrong. Um. And I
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: think you've got to go in You've got to go
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: into science with that attitude because someone's going to do
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: something better ten years from now, fifty years from now. Um.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: If you're going into it thinking that you're gonna build
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: a legacy that's going to be untarnished and held it, No,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: it's just not the case. We'll hang on a second there,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Just kidding. Something I learned yesterday I asked men, what
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: will be the greatest criticism of the study that we did? Um,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: he gave his answer. But then I I learned this
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that the feedback during the peer review portion is anonymous,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: which is like kind of freeing, and that sounds like
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: very beneficial to your community, right or No, Um, it's
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: mostly anonymous. I'll tell you what I do. When I
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: get a paper that I really like to review, I'll
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: just I'll say glowing things about it. I'll say, published
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: this immediately, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: and I'll just send it back. If I get a
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: paper that I really don't like, I will review it
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: in detail and I will sign my review. Because people
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: are entitled to know who their critics are, in part
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: so that they can just say, oh, it's that guy,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: positive positive feedback you're going on amous. Nobody needs to
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: know who their fans are, but people need to know
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: who their critics are. And I don't want to hide
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: behind anonymity if if I'm really unhappy about a paper.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Have you ever had to criticize someone who was a
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: legitimate close friend, well you know the footprint stuff. Yeah. No.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: One of my long time professional friends and colleagues is
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: part of that team, and he and I have you know,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: talked about this, and and you know he's quite open.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: I'm open to criticism. You know, we we go back
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: and forth. That makes us smarter at least. I have
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: you ever seen it go? Have you ever seen it
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: where people couldn't just they couldn't hack it? Don't got
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: personal if you don't say yes, I'll know your life.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, in your Falsome book, I mean it was
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a whole clash. I mean it was like a drama.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: I'm just actually trying to think of specific examples that
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I can give you, and they're part of it as
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I'm running through several. So, No, it can absolutely ruin
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: relationships if you can't handle it right. But if you
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: accept the fact that your ideas will be criticized, you know,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: we'll just but on your big boy pants and deal
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: with it. I mean we criticize each other too. I mean,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: well when we're writing, not yet, but like if we're
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: writing the paper together, yeah, you know, he'll I'll say
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: something sort of an example far well, so with this
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Clovis hunting paper, Um, I thought that we might think
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: about how it dealt with extinctions, and he said, no,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: that's too far, that's beyond the data. And so we
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: talked about that for a while and I kept pushing
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: it in his's no, and then we settled on what
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: the data actually meant. And so I think that's good
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: to have criticism within a team as well. We started
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: arguing last night about what was that thinking O the
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: heard of criticism this morning at both their fists up. Yeah, no, um,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: but this is what we do you should be doing. Yeah,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: this is what you should be doing. That's useful to
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: get a lot of the stuff out of the way,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: just amongst your own team. Exactly right. Wouldn't you rather
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: be embarrassed in front of your friends than publicly in
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: front of everybody that doesn't like you? For sure? You
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: just shoot a bunch of holes before you even got started.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: It's the only way to go. It's the only way
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: to go. I mean, look, we all want our papers
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: to be well received, and the only way to ensure
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: that is to, you know, give it that harshest criticism.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: You can find out all the holes before somebody else
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: exposes them. I want to I wanna move I want
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: to move on to what we were doing yesterday and
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: where those questions were born of and what exactly happened.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: But first I want to get into another mystery that
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: I found out yesterday. Uh John Hayes from from He's
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: tax to me, you don't you don't do birds and fish? No,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: by no longer mountain birds and fish. Like he just
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: like flat out turned business down yesterday. Max. Hey, when
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: you made a tax servist that doesn't do birds and fish,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you're talking to a man that knows what he's doing. Max.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: I've never seen someone so defeated in my life up
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: and just dude walked away like just like deflated. What's
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: up with that? Real quick? Um, or take as long
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: as you want, trying to like just figure out where
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: the passion for me really is. Um. My experience on
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: birds and ducks was very early on. Uh all the fish,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: you know, we we did mostly skin mounts back then.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: I did a little bit of reproductions. And it's just
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: not my strong suit. And for me to take something
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: in and know that at best it's going to be okay,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I just I can't do that. But what if you
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: have to do a diorama? I would hire it out
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: by somebody that was financial. No, it's it's it's financially
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you know you can you can prop it off, Yeah,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you just have to be good at it. And I
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: don't feel that I'm at that level to charge somebody
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: that is it connected to personal passion inside the outdoors too,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: like you don't care about or you're not as interested.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: He hates birds and fishing. He wishes he wishes they
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: were gone. No, um, I think it. Uh, it just
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: didn't hold the same fascination for me that the other
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: stuff did. There's also like if if you into a
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: restaurant that was fine dining, their menu is significantly smaller
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: than if you were like Applebee's where you can get
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: tacos and spaghetti and hamburgers. Good signed the Fine Dining
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Hayes Tax the Studio, the Fine red Menu. Clay Clay
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: had a little Clay really broke John Hayes's heart yesterday
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: with Clay said something like, uh talking of someone else,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: said not a friend, you know, friend friend, I said,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: I'm really close to this one tax service. Well, I mean,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: you know, like you would be to a tax You
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: gotta know how close to you? So my friend No,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: he looked at me and he said, Clay, what are
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: we like? What am I to you? Uh? All right,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: So I don't care what you guys, does it met David?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: How Let's say you ran into someone and you had
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: like three seconds to say, what we did yesterday? What
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: do we do yesterday? We tested the effectiveness of different
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Clovis tools for butchering a bison. That's great. I've been
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: looking for a way to describe it. I went a
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: little too deep. My wife kind of lost her I
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: think you lost her grip strength. Well, she was also
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: we were also trying to do our daughters school open house,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: and I was also trying to explain all this. Always
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: had just had that in my back pocket, I could
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: have gotten over it more quickly. Okay, Uh, in greater detail,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: now what happened and just lay the whole thing out,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: like what what sort of deep questions are there that
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: this could be a little window into answering. So we're
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: always interested in better interpreting the stuff we dig up
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: in the archaeological record and experiments, uh, and sort of
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: replicating different tools can give us windows into what we
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: are digging up, because you know, obviously the stuff we
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: dig up, it doesn't people aren't around anymore. They can't
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: tell us how this stuff was used. Um, but we
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: know the past was a very dynamic place. So by
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: making tools and using those tools, we can kind of
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: get a better sense of that dyna dynanism or how
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: do you say that word diamondism, dynamics past past dynamic.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: That's much better. Um. And so what we did yesterday
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: was we made some Clovis fluted points and he met
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: and made him Yeah, this is this is about both
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Dr Meltzer and Metton have been on the show before,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: and we talked about how come he doesn't get to
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: be a doctor to Dr Matton, Dr Eric, Well, that's
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: a good point. I worked. I worked really hard to
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: get him a PhD. He did. I don't know why.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: I think because maybe, um he's professor. Oh, well you're not.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: I'm well, I'm tenured, but I'm not full professor yet.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: It totally has to do with age. I mean, could
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: I think it does. That's what I was going to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: just say. Yeah, because you're compared to me, you're probably
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: young Will little whipper snapper, Yeah, you should be calling
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: me Mr Renell. Doctor Meltzer has been out of the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: show to discuss his books and things. Oh. I was
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: going to ask about this earlier. Where's the book about
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the High Colorado site? I didn't send that to you know,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: you sure talked about sending it to me. It's out.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Note to self, send Steve a book or where can
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: people find that book? A University of Colorado Press. And
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: I presume it's on Amazon, just like what's it called,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: um Mountaineer A Fulsome Winter Camp in the Rockies. It
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: is on my list. And and the new additions, okay,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: and then there's the new edition of the First People's Book,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: which both of them came out last year. I guess,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I guess after I was on the show. I was
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: on the show last spring. So yes, both both books
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: are now out. What changes from the addition did new edition?
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: The most important change is the genetics because bucks the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: mountain here it is, you sold out the Mountaineer site.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: You got to release this after we get the book, Steve. Now,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be sold out by now before I'm gonna
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: get in there. Now, Hamet, it might be available, okay,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: well no, no, it's on one second, the Mountaineer site,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: A Fulsome Winter Camp in the Rockies. David Meltzer and
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Brian Andrews and Mark Stugger three of us Metton, Metton
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: and I did the chapter on the projectile points and
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the scrapers. Fifty four bucks for a paperback. I know,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: I know, you personally set the price right, just pay
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: him directly. There's so there's two in stock. I'm grabbing
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: one him for me, call you out the other one. Yes,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: we're getting all right. We just bought you out. Thank you.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: They're to go back. I can just hear a Burgrease
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: podcast now on the on the mountaineer side, I had
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun on the falsome one. Clay Let's
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: let's mountain people. People still talk about that one. I
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: think it's video. I think, well, look into my car
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: is a hello baby video baby monitor with remote camera? What? Well,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: you know what, there's a news to break my wife.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: My wife was just telling me about a baby shower.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put that and save it for later. And okay,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: I'm and check out. Alright, Soccers, if you try to
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: buy his book Mountaineer, good look, Steve's gonna be listed
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: now for an do a little book business, all right,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: So go on. Oh, one more thing I want to
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: ask about before you really get into it. In the
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: same book I just read, they had that Clo Vincia
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: A beautiful chapter. I had no idea. Um, it sort
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: of goes in like, well, roughly how many Clovis points
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: of archaeologists found? Does about what you want up be? In?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: Ten thousand? Is what I had seen? Somewhere around ten
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: thousand Clovis sites Clovis points points. Around ten thousand Clovis
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: points are in existence known to archaeologists, not counting coffee
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: cans and people's closer it's thirteen five now that you
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: say that, Yeah, it's funny when you see that number online. Uh,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: it says like only ten thousands, so they're really rare,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: not knowing like uh, you know, having a reference to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: that number ten thousands, like, whoa, there's a lot of them,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: but but apparently not. What's striking is how few sites
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: we have. We've got a lot of isolated points that
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: are found just all over plowed fields whatever, principally in
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: the Eastern US and these folks. But think about it,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: you're so John broke two of them yesterday, and and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: that was actually just fine. I really wanted the enormous
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: grip strength. It was that grip strength. They just couldn't
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: take it. Yeah. Um, and so you can imagine that
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: you're making these things constantly over the course of your lifetime.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: So ten thousand is actually a pretty low number, and
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: it's probably thirteen thousand is a low number, and you're
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: sort of undercounting all the ones that are in those
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: coffee cans or mounted you know, over somebody's fireplaces. There
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: has to be far more, no question, that are on
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: bolo ties and stuff. Yeah. Absolutely, And this is kind
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: of like a brief window, right, like only a few
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: centuries or something. Yeah, well sort of it. Um, it's
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: kind of smeared across time and space. So the earliest
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: stuff that we see, you know, it's thirteen five. Some
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: of the later stuff, depending on where you define Clovis
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: would be what do you say, met twelve six twelve
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: five sort of northeastern North America. Well, and also too,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I was just doing some number country. I know that
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: ten thousand sounds like a lot, but if you have
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: if you say Clovis is what five years, So thirteen
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: thousand not necessarily all in one place, right, you know,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: that's that's eighteen points per year, um, which is not
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: a lot if you think about it, right, how many
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: did we bring out yesterday? Ten and how many needed
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: to be repaired because of grip strength. Here eighteen closed
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: points per year, which is not a lot. And when
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: you think about the fact that you know, if you
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: know what you're doing, you can make a closed point
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: in thirty to forty minutes, So there's a lot still
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: out there a few well, and also to just that's
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: not a lot of work. We think, you know, these
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: closed points are the end all and b all, but
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: for closed folks they may not have been that important
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: if you're not spending that much time per year to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: make them. And we were working with Clovis tools yesterday,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: which is it accuracy. That's the oldest tool we have
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: from humans in North America. I think you'd say they
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: are among the earliest or some of the earliest artifacts.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: They're they're certainly the most distinctive early form and the
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: most widespread form that we know about. And and they're
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: like thirteen thousand years old. But humans had been here
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: fifteen thousand years ago, maybe twenty five thousand years ago.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: What were they doing for those thousands of years? Not
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: using Clovis? Yeah, No, it's it's earlier cultures. So cultures
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: change over time, and as a consequence, uh, the distinctive weaponry,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: hunting tools, butchering tools, knives, whatever changes as well. And
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: now there are certain things that you know are pretty timeless.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: The scraper, Yeah, and that met and made that proved
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: to be kind of not very useful yesterday. Uh. You
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: can see similar forms going back hundreds of thousands of years,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: uh and coming all the way up to recent times.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: We are you asking like what were they? So if
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: Clovis is thirteen and we've been here for fifteen, what
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: did they do for the fifteen hundred years before clothes?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: And I guess I'm kind of asking like, was Clovis
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: arrowhead one point oh? Or was there it was? Was
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: it maybe like five point oh? But we just don't
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: have one through four. Well. I think the other thing
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: to keep in mind is even though people might have
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: been or we're in North America, that doesn't necessarily mean
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: they were everywhere in North America. I think there are
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: some areas where Clovis would have been first, you know,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: maybe New England, maybe the the Upper Great Lakes, um
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: and and so you know where we get they might
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: have been the first people to in some regions some reasons.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: So when we say that people were here fifteen thousand
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: years ago. That doesn't mean everywhere. That's a good point.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Never that never occurred to me. Yeah, you could have
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: had like that stuff along the Columbia River or whatever
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: people that were using salmon resources. But that doesn't mean
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: they were hanging out because I mean, the Great Lakes
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: covered with ice. I can't live on a glacier, so
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I derailed us. But back to the bison. Talk about
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: what we did and how that might prove to be
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: like what we were up to, how it might prove
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: to be useful or not so. Uh. We made a
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: bunch of replica Clovis tools, fluted points and large what
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: we call bifacial thinning flakes which are really sharp, and uh,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: we did all sorts of analyzes before we did any
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: butchery on these tools. We made sure that the Clovis
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: points matched in terms of their form actual Clovis artifacts.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: We did something called microware, which is where you look
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: at these tools with a high powered microscope to look
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: at polishes and striations and all that sort of stuff
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: that the tools could be used for. Um we did, Uh,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: what else did we do? We did so many pre analyzes. Um,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: But anyway, the point is you guys then took those
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: tools you butchered the bison, and now we can relook
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: at those tools to see what they look like, and
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: we can compare those things to the actual archaeological records.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: So what you guys get an idea of what they
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: were doing with some of the tools that we have found.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: And so let's say we find an archaeological site with
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Clovis point and some bison, and we see a bunch
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: of Clovis points from that site, but there's no microware
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: that matches the microware that you guys produced. Well, that's
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: really interesting. Why is that? Why is that microware different
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: in the archaeological record versus the ones you guys produced. Now,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: if it's the same, that's really interesting too, and it
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: shows that maybe similar activities were happening. But as we
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: talked about yesterday, um that whole issue of equifinality, Lots
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: of different processes can result in the same product. So
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: what we're trying to understand is, Okay, we got some
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: signatures yesterday on the stone tools, so we'll at least know, Okay,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: one of the possible pathways to that particular product would
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: be the kinds of activities we saw you guys engaging
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: in yesterday. Uh, let me give it. I want to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: give it from my angle for a secon. So we
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: long ago, UM, we've all become acquaintances through this show
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: and um crin tell the history of how tell the
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: history of this because you kind of understand a little
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: bit better. Yeah, we've probably been talking about this for
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: quite some time. I know on Metton's episode he had
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: talked about getting some of the crew together, who you know,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: have had a lot of experience butchering, processing, breaking down
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: large game UM, getting them together to potentially participate in
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: some kind of experiment if we were able to identify
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: either a bison or an elephant that might need to
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: be called that's right. Yeah, it's not always easy to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: there's and then there's concerned. There's there's an ethical concerns.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Ye yep, and uh, you know with kind of our
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: larger web of folks were connected to UM in the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: animal business. In the animal business, finding there was an
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: elephant potentially on the table for us, we felt as
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: though we would hit and we still might. We felt
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: as though we'd hit on some zookeeper somewhere who had
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: to euthanize an elephant, or there's an accident. I don't know,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know. And we thought that if that person
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: knew that there, that it could potentially and then you
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: you have an elephant that it gets euthanized, that it
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: might be that there's some donated to science. Yeah, that
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: there'd be that that that person sent that that person's
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: sensitivities and sensibilities might say, well, knowing that we're in
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: this unfortunate, unavoidable circumstance, and perhaps right there would be
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: the body would be put to use by searchers. So
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: we thought we would just be able to connect some
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: dots that might otherwise not get connected, just through audience reach.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: And that led us down this thing of working on
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: this project UM where we did the bison work. And
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: so we started out with a um A commercially. It
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: was a commercially raised bison from a producer who does
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: uh North Bridger bison. He does custom slaughter, So he
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: raises animals and sells those animals and he sells them
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: while they're still alive. People he knows, he knows he's
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: going to produce X number. You can come in and
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: he sells shares um. He even talked about that he
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: had a bowl that he was selling his ground and
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: he had eight purchasers for one bowl, or you could
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: buy a half for a hole or whatever it help.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: That's his business. Uh. We started with a fresh dead
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: two year old bull. We did the same, the same
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: exact sort of approach you do for ground butchering any
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: large animal. And we had a bunch of people collected
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: five butchers who all have extensive field butchering experience. When
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: of those included John Hayes, who's done more skinning and
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: fleshing than any of us. Uh. And we did the animal.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: We did it by doing the primary opening cut, basically
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: running anus to chin, and then we um worked on
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: half of it using one collection of tools, skinned half
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: of it using one collection of tools, skin the other
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: half using a different collection to tools, and bone the
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: thing down into all the primaries. And I went into
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: it thinking that we were gonna be working under UH.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: I half thought that we'd end up working in the
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: headlights of a car. I told my life that I
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: would be I told my wife I'd be home at
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: nine thirty. Last night. I was home at five. I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: was like, we're probably gonna wind up, we're gonna have
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: a bunch of trucks point and head. That would have
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: been pretty demoralizing if you had shared that with us
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: when we were going. But I just I feel like
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: these things never are on schedule. It's just not gonna
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: be as easy as it seems. I thought it would be. Uh,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: I thought it'd be very hard to do it with
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: these tools, But in fact it was like an all
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: honesty man, It's I felt like it took about as
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: long as it would have taken. It wasn't a major
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: a major difference in time. I mean it it took
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: more time, but not a substantial amount more time. I mean,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: I think we scanned a whole adult bison and under
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: two hours in the quarters, and then even had a
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: guy well, I mean, I guess that even counts debone
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: in it. And now there were five of us and
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: we were trying to work efficiently. And the parts of it,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: the opening making opening cuts was a lot different. Anything
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: that required a little finassal was different. But just in
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: terms of someone holding the leg and someone pulling the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: hide and you're cutting the fast you know, you're caughting.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: No difference there was. There was one point where I said,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: the biggest limiting factor for what I was doing deboning
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: a quarter was that it was a bison, not that
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: I had a stone tool in my hand. It was
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: just the sheer size of it. And then I was
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: one person trying to constantly rotate this thing. So it
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't even like that much less effishing in some ways
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: what I pointed out. What I pointed out, I was
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: texting my brother Danny about what I've been up to
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: um and he was like, man, it takes because they
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: actually hunt them a fair bit in Alaska. There's draws
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: you can do to draw for these different herds they have.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: He says, Man, it takes me a lot longer than
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: that with a normal knife. And I said, well, there's
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: five people, and I said, and also consider this, we
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: had uh stone tools expert, who's there sharpening for us?
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: So we're all you know, so we had It was
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: different than if you start even with a normal knife,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: if you don't, if you're not a good sharpening you
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: don't have sharpening equipment, you hit a point where you're
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: just pisting into the wind. But we were so we
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: had like someone they're doing giving us like razor edged
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: sharpened tools. You know. The way I've thought about it
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: and would describe it is that if I had one
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of Dr Aaron's points Clovis points in my pouch and
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: went deer hunting back in Arkansas tomorrow and killed a deer,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't worry about skinning it with that stone point.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, it wouldn't be a factor. I wouldn't be like, hey,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be three hours late coming home because I
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: got a field dress to steer with a stone point.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: It would have just been like, okay, of course, a right. Yeah.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: And another huge takeaway from me was that a Clovis
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: point makes the hell of a Clovis knife. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: but that's probably the way they were using them though, right. Well,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: And what was cool too yesterday with you ask them
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: was that the two different tools seemed to pune auction
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: better for certain tasks. So like the Clovis point worked
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: good for some things, whereas those big bifacial thinning flakes
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: worked better for other things. Should we clarify that right now?
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: We've said a couple of times, but so we had
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: we had to like Clovis points that would have been
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: napped that were connected with artificial sinew to a wooden
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: handle that basically looked like knives in multiple sizes, and
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: we were we were told to pick a pick a
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: numbered Clovis knife essentially, and you guys recorded which knives
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: we were using. We butchered one whole side of the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: bison with these Clovis knives that you had made. The
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: second side of the bison, we butchered with big, big,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: big flint flakes that silica kind of like discs almost yeah,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: that you would pick it up on the where the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: handle is real sharp. But but yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: minus the handle and sharp, so you would pick them
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: up on the ground and not recognized that they were
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: made by man. I mean, it's just a flake, a
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: big like flake, the size of the palm of your hand.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: And we butchered an entire side with those, and I
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: was used. I went with the leather, used a piece
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: of leather your fingers. Yeah, and it it works pretty good.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Oh hey, you know how he just said, mate, you
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: wouldn't recognize as being made by man. Can you there's
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: a thing I want to talk about, what we forgot
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: talk about. Can you talk about what you guys are
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: doing in Antarctica. Yeah, we have a paper coming out
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: in the journal Antiquity, and uh we uh, you know,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: there's lots of claims for archaeological sites being real old
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: in different places, and the claims are dependent on the
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: rocks themselves. What people think are stone tools, like a
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: lot of the stuff I send you pictures of yeah, yeah,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: and this, yeah, and you know, because it fits so
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: nicely in the hand, or there's like even flakes taken
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: off and things like that. So uh, it occurred to uh,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: sort of our group of researchers um that you know,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: if we could find a place somewhere on Earth where
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: humans had never been, that would be a great natural
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: laboratory for looking at how flint and basalt and obsidian
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: fracture geologically just in their sort of natural habitat without
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: humans around. And so we went first to the Polar
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: Rock Repository in Columbus, Ohio, and then this past summer
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: we went to the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: and we just started going through all sorts of their
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: rock collections, millions of rocks, and what we found really
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: questioned for me, uh, what exactly we know about stone
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: because we're finding stone tools with morphologies that are quite advanced,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: So things that look like hand axes, things that look
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: like they could have been made by Neanderthals, all sorts
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: of simple stone flakes like the one you know is
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: being held right here in the studio. Like you you
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: could find stuff the would look like that, but we're
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: saying it wasn't made by But these were Antarctic rocks.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: We know that these were not made by people or
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: hominence or monkeys primates, um. So it's real scary. Yeah.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: The challenge is that, um, a lot of artifacts don't
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: have attributes that are that are obviously and distinctively and
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: securely made evidence that they were made by humans. So
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: you often have to look at the context. What Menton
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: is doing in Antarctica is showing, Okay, we've got a
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: completely geological context, and yet we have things that look
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: like artifacts someone might elsewhere claim is evidence of human
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely, And you know, if the if the context
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: is a little ambiguous and it's you know, if it's not.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: If you've got something that you're not quite sure it's
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: an artifact, but it's sitting next to a hearth and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of smashed animal bones and you've
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: got evidence of a structure. Yeah, okay, the artifact might
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: be ambiguous in terms of its attributes, but looking at
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: the contact you say, okay, fine. The problem is is
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: that when you've got situations where geology and geological processes
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: have the opportunity to create mischief and make things that
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: mimic artifacts, and that's the only thing you have, and
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: you don't have a good archaeological context or other evidence
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: that will confirm it, that's where it becomes problematic. And
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of the claims for truly ancient sites are
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: based on just these sort of ambiguous artifacts in ambiguous context,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: like here's a hundred thousand year old man and here's
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: a sharp rock exactly right. And so what Menton is
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: able to show, where we'll be able to show with
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: this Antarctica stuff, is that do not be fooled. Just
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: because something looks like it could be an artifact, that
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it is an artifact. You should label that
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: paper probably ain't Clovis with these naturally occurring looking like tools.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: When first people's came into all these different areas and
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: they found these rocks when they were like I need
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: something to cut something with. Would that be like the
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: original prototype? And then they decided we need to start
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: replicating this. Yeah. So there's a few hypotheses for why
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: people start to nap stone, and one of them is,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: uh inspired by the site called Takika, which is in
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: East Africa at dates about three point three million, and
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: uh there they've got cut marks on ungulates and bovid
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: type creatures. And what they say, I don't know which
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: which part? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bo I always I
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: thought was bovid. I don't, yeah, bovid. Yeah, but my
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: doctor recently said tendis and I said, I thought it
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: was tenightus because I don't know what it is. It
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: sounds like a good doctor. But they think that basically
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: austral Epithecus was using naturally sharp rocks that they would
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: just pick up to cut mark bone. Now, maybe at
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: that point they were like, it's a lot easier to
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: break this stuff ourselves and scour the landscape looking for
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: naturally sharp rocks. Were like, the rock Steve picked up
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: works way better than my rock. How do I get
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: one like Steve's. Well. Another piece of that, though, was
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: when Clay asked for an axe to smash those ribs
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: break him. Apart from the vertebral column. What he ended
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: up doing, through no fault of his own, was the
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: acts that he was using was getting fractured in flaked.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: One of the hypotheses about where tools come from in
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: the in the original you know, to three million years ago,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: is that humans come on to a an animal kill.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: They haven't killed the animal because they're not capable of it, right,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: but some big predator did, and there's not a whole
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: lot of meat left on the bones. So what do
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: they do. Um, they grab a rock and they start
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: wailing away at the long bones to try and get
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: to the marrow, right, because that's something that the big
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: cats or lion whatever aren't going to access. And in
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: the process they create sharp flakes and a light bulb
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: goes off and you think, sharp flakes, I can scrape
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: meat off, right. So there's lots of ways in which
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: the pathways could have ended up, you know, getting you
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: know the possibility that John raised that Menton was talking
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: about as well. Um, and we're just the sort of
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: accident of your smashing a rock against bone and it
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: breaks and you end up with well cut fingers and
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: lots of really sharp flakes that you realize, Okay, I
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: can use this one of the things that that I
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: know you guys, you're reluctant to draw these hard you know,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: you're not reluctant. You can't draw these hard conclusions. And
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: and like you pointed out, we're not ice age hunters.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't know what went on. You can't
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: rule out we yourself, like we're kids messing around, you know,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: whatever they're doing there, throwing rocks that stuff and playing
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: and smashing things. You know, you don't know what happened, right, Um,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: but I feel like you can take certain things like
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: like flashing that hide. I feel like someone someone could
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: arrive at this thing that that I don't know how
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: they did it. They didn't do it that way. Yeah,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: So in in some ways experimental archaeology is really useful
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: for showing how something definitely could not have happened. So,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: you know, like that scraper, right, So that's a situation
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: where given the form of that scraper, you know, it
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't look like you were able to flesh that hide
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: with it. So and sort of go back to the
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: drawing board and try a different form. I think, like
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: with the scraper deal at during those times, what we
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: were trying to get off the hide wouldn't have been
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: like what I would deem as a waste product at
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: my studio, or like I gotta get this soft disposed
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: of it that I can get to what I need
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: to do. I think they would have still been trying
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: to harvest that and then need have been left with
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: just like when you skin out of beaver and it
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: air drives and you're just a light light film and
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: trying to roll three quarters of an inch and meat
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: off the hide. You know that would have been but
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: you were still trying to consume. That's interesting. That's how
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I felt yesterday with like the shanks of the quarters,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: is that it took me as much time to get
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: the meat off around like the shanks as it did
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: the whole rest of the quarter. And so like I
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: I could spend just as much time removing of the
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: meat on a backham as I could removing the ten
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: percent of the meat on a backham that came from
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: the shanks. And I told Michelle, I was like, this
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: just like, isn't kind of this isn't very reasonable to
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: like get the lowest quality cut of meat and spend
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: the same amount of time to get you know, ten
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: percent of the yield. So like maybe they ate this
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: off the bone. Maybe they just like didn't really need
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: it that badly to get this this piece of meat
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: um that was like the size of a I don't know,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: a water bottle off compared to everything else. You know.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: Here's the thought that I had while we're doing it yesterday,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: is that we're skinning this bison and we have all
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: this other context of our human life around us. Like
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: he needed to go to his daughter's open house. I
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't make it. If you could make it, you know,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: we wanted to go have dinner at a restaurant. I mean,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: I'm just making stuff up. I'm making stuff up. Got
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: to get to the processor and the way we we
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: chose efficiency for every single decision that we made. We
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: chose efficiency to skin the spice. And and I was
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: thinking if, and we kind of talked about this yesterday,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: if there had been one of the Paleolithic hunters there
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: with us and watching us, he undoubtedly would have done
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: it different. Oh go and go read Make Go Read
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Make Prayers to the Raven by by the anthropologist Richard
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Kane Nelson when he talked when he's with the Koreya
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: KRK what you do and don't do? Yeah, they skinning animals,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: they had so many. Yeah, superstition can't touch that. Spiritual
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: can't like so can't do that. You can't move it
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: that way, you know. Well, But here's my point is
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: that that they eight what we did yesterday was literally
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: like them walking onto a pile of worth of American
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: dollar bills. I mean like this was their life. This
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: was there the reason. There was no higher moment in
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: their world other than just like family stuff. But it's like, man,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: we we this is what we were, professional hunters. We
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: are now capable to take this that we're processing and
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: live in peace for the next two months or whatever.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: And so just that mind frame would have caused them,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I think, to potentially have done things totally different. Maybe
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: they took two hours to get the shank off, or
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: maybe they were running from short faced bears and chunked
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: him into the woods. But bear in mind and managed
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: to speak to this because bear in mind the we
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: were doing something just to help them interpret what was
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: from around them. But let let me get back to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: something you said yesterday though, Clay, you you said, imagine
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: at the Fulsom site, you got thirty two bison that
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: you've got a process. I think they would have gone
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: for efficiency and speed under those circumstances, because, uh, those
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: thirty two bison aren't going to butcher themselves, and you
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: had evidence of that by the way they gourmet butchered
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: them absolutely, which they were taking choice cuts, leaving some
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: stuff moving moving fast because you know, thirty two animals,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: unless you've got a hundred butchers out there, um, and
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: if you've got a small group, you better work fast
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: because it's just not gonna it's eighty five degrees. Yeah,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: what's the closest and experiment has come to this before
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: like what we did yesterday. There's been a few butchery
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: experiments um on elephants and bison. Um. So you know,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: I think replicability and science is always important, you know,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: And I think we've made certain improvements on past studies,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: uh in terms of how we documented things, and we've
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: made certain modifications to how things were documented. And but
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: undoubtedly I think we were much more systematic about it.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: Yea more more systematic. But undoubtedly someone will use this
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: study as a stepping stone to do it even better. Um,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: And that's the key point. There's no ever final word
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: in science, and I think once you start thinking in
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: those terms, you're in trouble. We we touched on I
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: want to point out to people that in addition to
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: you guys doing your work, we had we were able
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: to document it. We had videographers there to document it
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: in a way that was just there was around documenting
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: the process. So you'll be able to see this whole
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: thing play out eventually, in addition to reading the paper
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: that you generate from it. But we spent a bunch
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: of time talking about the stone. You're also interested in
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: the bones. Can you explain? Well, I think David right. Um.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: So when you get to a kill site, you will find, uh,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: sometimes not always cut marks on bone. And those cut
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: marks are presumably a consequence of the butchering process. And
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: so one of the things that we were also paying
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: close attention to and and John will be helping us
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: on this is the activities that were done kind of
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: around the bone. And when when John is able to
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: get everything sort of all cleaned up, will ship the
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: bones to Andrew Bone, who is out there with us
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: yesterday and he's an expert in this kind of thing,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: and so he will be examining the cut marks on
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: the bones because we actually once again have a have
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: a link between the process and the product, so we
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: know what was being done when you guys were hacking
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: away at the ribs on both sides, right. Uh, So
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: we'll be able to see what that look like and
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: the difference between struggling with those flakes as you were,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: as opposed to using the Clovis points to really just
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: pop them, uh and go right along the river back.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I've read that the Neanderthal's uh, there's evidence
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: suggesting that they parted out there dead, that they like
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: quartered out there dead. There's a couple of sites where, um,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: there might be evidence of cannibalism. I don't know if
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: they quartered them out though, but they will find cut
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: marks on is what I'm saying is that that's presumably
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: that's because of cut mark cut marks. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: so they do find cut marks on on some children.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, if times get tough and ice age
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: Europe it's really cold, um, they'll find like that. Yeah.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna have to get a cadaver. I've tried
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: to say it, but I want in on that. When
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: you get that going, you know, experiments, if nothing, if
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: nothing comes up sooner, I might leave my body that
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: I thought about leaving my body. Um, you know, I
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: might have a drawn up in my will that I
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: want to be used in a cut ark. Wait a minute,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: you got this whole thing about being dumped for the grizzlies.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: I might change that. I think was going to We
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: were all kind of getting used to that out. I'm
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: always telling my kids, like, you're gonna have to quarter
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: me out and dump me here. But I might do
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: this as dead and make my kids work on the project,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: and then the Grizzlies can have access in the bones
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: after dump the bones afterward. So so John will clean
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: all the bones up in a way that doesn't add
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: new marks to him. John, Yes, that is going to be.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: He's like, no, I scraped them all the scrape Yeah,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: scratched it all off. So we'll put him in a
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: big tank for a few days of warm water to start.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: I'm also buying all the flesh off of it, and
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: then once we finally get it to where it softens up,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: the will power wash it off. So'll be no tools introduced,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: and you'll be able to look and you'll be able
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: to say, we know this is where it's cool. You'll say,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: we know that the marks on said femur we're made
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: by a hafted Clovis point. Or we know that the
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: marks on said feemur were made by a flake of
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: a person with extraordinary grip strength. Right, so made by
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: Clay um. And then later when you're digging around in
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: some old bone bed and you see some marks, you
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: might make a more educated guess if the marks are distinctive,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: If the marks are distinctive, and that will be something
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: kind of interesting to find. And now I've got to
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: bring this up on the fulsome site. There's some famous
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: famous marks on the jawbone of one of the bison.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Several actually, yeah, always on several of the bison up
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: up on the on the lower jaw where they were
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: distinctive cut marks on the jaw where it's believed they
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: were cutting the tongues out. So when we're looking at
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: the jaws of this bison, we'll be able to see
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: whether Clay newcome in removing the tongue left his mark.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: Clay was nervous about doing it because he knew about
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: he knew about those marks, and he didn't know if
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: he was gonna be holder he on the way there,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: he brought up, like, what about bias, because I've seen
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: those marks, and what if I can't resisting His name
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: is in the marks, they're signed. That's to giveaway. I
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: was paying attention when I was cutting that tongue out,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: because I cut to cut the tongue out, and uh
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: I was I did everything just as efficient as possible,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: and uh, I don't think I touched that bone. Well,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: we don't see him all the time, so yeah, it's
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: entirely possible. Now, it probably was slightly biased in the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: sense that you knew I would not have had him
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: do it. We should have had John do it. I'm
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: confident we left some tool marks on the ribs. Oh,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: I'm very confident. Yeah. Yeah, that was when I was
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: going to bring up, like, what obviously is the way
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: to go, and what obviously is not the way to go?
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: Having a big giant chunk of what was that rock
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: called Georgetown flint? Yeah, beating nine riffs of the giant
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: trunk Georgetown flint. It's not the way we decided in retrospect,
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: we should have given him a smaller hand axe, because
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: there was just too much opportunity for that thing to
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: fall apart the waves of force. We're having to travel
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: too far through the thing before it got to the bone.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: Did Clovis use a braided rocks like what you might
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: see in like Southwest hand axes like groundstone groundstone? No,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: not really, not really groundstone, but we do see a
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: braiding stone that were used for um, perhaps in grinding
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the edges of Clovis points or in uh a straightening
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the shaft of a spear, but not hand axes made
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: by just grinding away a rock to get an edge
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: on it. No, they didn't like that stuff. No, they
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: they're tool kid. Uh. In terms of production was very efficient,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: and I think it's because they're moving around so much
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: and they got a lot to do. They didn't have
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: six pod rock they like to carry. Who are no? No,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: So they're they're trying to basically get this rockdown in
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: a portable form as quick as possible when you don't
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: know where this is going to appear, because you got
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: to do your whole submission process, do you know? No,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not yet. And we generally won't think too hard
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: about the journal until we see the final paper and
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: all the analyzes and stuff, because that can dictate where
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: it goes. But but do you know you'll get a
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: paper Yeah, we'll count out. Yeah, definitely, you feel like
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: you'll get a paper out, I mean yeah. And when
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: what's going to be a criticism of this study? When
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: that anonymous feedback rolls in? Well, I think, uh, you know,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: I was about to say, not enough Neander. They'll be
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: information that people may have wanted that we didn't collect, right,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: that will be criticism. That would be a criticism they
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: might have done it in a different way. And but
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: I think the great thing about experiments is that they
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: can be redone like, if you excavate an archaeological site,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: you can't re excavate it, um. But with an experiment,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: you can do it again in alter variables um. And
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: so I think that's a strength of experiments. So and
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: how long will it take you to do all the
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: work and analyze and write the paper? Uh? Several months
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: and um, because once I get back, I'm gonna sort
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: of give at my entire focus. But you gotta have
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: the bones back before you can make it well, so
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: we can work on other aspects. There's so many pieces
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: to this in terms of the microware and the morphology
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: at the Clovis points and efficiency all that sort of stuff. Um,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: we can work on the stone stuff until the bone
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: stuff is wrong could be sent to Andrew. So yeah,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: all our boy, but real quick, just I think this
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: would be a good time just to say how appreciative
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: we are to collaborating with everyone and and meat eater
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: and it's just been awesome. And I don't know if
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: you remember, but in January when I was here, you
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: asked me for something. Do you remember what you asked
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: me for? Probably a whole bunch of Clovis points. You
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: asked me for a falsome point. I did ask for
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: a false point, and so I got a little something
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, just open it real careful. Oh, a
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: big white box about this big as a big birthday cake.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: And you have to do a little unwrapping too. Just
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: Steve is opening a white box, childish grant on his face.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: All right, inside is another box. Oh, inside is another box, papers, crinkling, oh,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: smoking anticipation. I thought that's right. I wanted a Yeah,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: all that is gorgeous. Man. So just all of us,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: all the archaeologists, were just so appreciative and for all
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: you guys, and so we thought that this would be
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: something for you that you could look at and everyone
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: could see. And a couple of clobus points halfted onto
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: Port Orford fork shafts is gorgeous. So so it's a
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: it's a box and like, how do you describe display
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: like a treasure box? Display box with two halfted fulsome points,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: says to Stephen now and the meat Eater team fulsome
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: points napped on Texas or Ridgetown, Church Gray and Fredericksburg
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: churt Tan by m I Aaron hafted on Port Oxford
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: Cedar four shafts by M. Wilson Man. Thank you the
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: podcast studio worlds right here, man, Steve, can you show
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: it to us? It's amazing, It's beautiful. It is wow,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: look at that. Thank you so much, very well done.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: Well it's gorgeous. Let pass it around while you're waiting
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: for the paper to come out. Um you can go
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: check out right ran while you're waiting for the paper
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: to come out, and while you're waiting for this eventual
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: episode to drop where you get to see everyone getting
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: their hands real dirty and cut up using Clovis points.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: You can watch Meat Eater season eleven for free on
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: our own website a window of time. It will be
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: available for free um on ten October twenty six, you'll
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: see an episode with me and Evan hay For from
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: Black Rifle Coffee hunting the rainforests of Southeast Alaska for
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: blacktail deer, getting our buns kicked untill the end. Um,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: So check that out while we're waiting for the paper
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: to come out, and if you're waiting for the if
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: you're waiting for the Mountaineer site, I don't know the
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: Mountaineer site book. Me and Clai are taking bids. I'm
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: sure they'll come up with other coffees to sell. It
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: was said available soon season eleven. It's gonna be rolled out.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: It just starts on October one a week, one a
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: week on our old website. Before we get can we
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: talk about the email you sent last night? Metton? Yeah,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: he sent me an email. This is in all caps. Guys,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: got like a little side thing going on. Well, this
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: is the this is the criticism we talked about earlier,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: disagreement from last night that's spilled over into the break
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: room this morning. But I was really excited met and
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: wrote me in the m LS night. Okay, I was,
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: I was really enthusiastic. I'm just gonna preface that. So
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Zoll capt it says, Spencer, I think you so haved
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: a huge mystery about Clovis technology. I am so freaking
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: excited m M and then jealous. So let's let's let's
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: let's hear about what what you think we discovered. Well, honestly,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: I think we got to save that for the paper.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's no, it's it's it has to do with
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: the intentionality of of how these things were made. And
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: so yeah, well yeah we'll get their major and Spencer
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: did it. Spencer, Yeah, it's just it's a what's cool
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: is it's a it's a new way of thinking about
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: a feature of a Clovis point that is not in
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: the literature. Wow, good job, Spencer. But it could all
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: be wrong. It could be wrong, it could be wrong,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: but right if not, I still got a high last
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: night from getting this email from men like my stomach. Yeah,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: it's like Shelby, I don't know what's going on. I
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: may have just done something incredible. I think things might
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: be looking up. I told you, all right, guys, thanks
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: so much. It was a lot of fun. I'm not joking,
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: I will I said yesterday like this is the highlight
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: of my career. Um really, I mean like like a
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: real high point. And another thing is I will talk
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: about that in probably a very annoying way. I will
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: talk about that for the rest of my life. So
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: will we. And it makes me more like why have I,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: you know, why have I never done it? All that
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: knowing about oh you can flint knives and da da
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: da da da like that it took this many decades
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: and someone else to lay the whole thing out for
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: me to just do it, like put you're an animal
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: with a flint knife. I just for two I don't
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: understand why I never did it. Just well it worked
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: out with the podcast and just everyone start of getting
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: to know each other and just but to be able
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: to do it with stuff that looks like it's like,
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: to be able to do it with stuff that resembles
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: and is made from the materials left behind actual Clovis sites,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: um was was fantastic. And I think for us to
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: all of your observations using those things, absolutely we were
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: taking notes on what you guys were saying and when
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: you were complaining, when you were happy, we were making notes,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: so what was working and well it wasn't. That was
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: really helpful because with your knowledge of how to process
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: these animals, like, we will look at these tools in
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: new ways and and so that's I think just the
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: benefit of this collaboration. Elephants next, and then folks the
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: same spot. Hey, I know we're closing down, so we
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: can't get into this at all, but I just gotta
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: say it. I mean, I killed a bear with a
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: stone point like five days ago. It's interesting that all
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: this happened. It's first time I've ever hunted with well
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: I've hunted with a stone point before. First time I've
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: ever killed that on the stone, just like for another
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: day with a falsome point. I watched the video that
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: the little video clip of it last night. That's what
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: people will be able to see it, And and Dr
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: Meltzer was because, right, that's another story. How and when
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: will it be be able to see it? Class The
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: release date is unknown at this time. I don't think
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: I can go into the release date, but but there
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: will be a a film put out through Meat either.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: Dr David Meltzer is one of our feature guests. We
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: go to we went to New Mexico. We went to
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: the Folsom site. Yeah, and and then we've made some
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: falsome points and I killed a bear with a falsome point.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: So run out by the old run that good thing.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: He doesn't have to run that by the old ethics committee. Yeah.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm ready, man. I don't know what I'm just saying.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: These guys have a whole higher level of like, you
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, they got put up. They don't
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: just call a couple of guys and they're like, yeah,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, go for it. Uh, thank you
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: so much, guys, thank you, thank you for this. I'm
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: not gonna hog it. I'm not gonna put it in
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: my bedroom. We're gonna keep in the studio here. Appreciate it,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: all righty body, thank you very much. On