First New Englanders -- Last Mammoths

[uniface]

Woolly mammoths may have walked the landscape at the same time as the earliest humans in what is now New England, according to a Dartmouth study published in Boreas. Through the radiocarbon dating of a rib fragment from the Mount Holly mammoth from Mount Holly, Vt., the researchers learned that this mammoth existed approximately 12,800 years ago. This date may overlap with the arrival of the first humans in the Northeast, who are thought to have arrived around the same time.

"It has long been thought that megafauna and humans in New England did not overlap in time and space and that it was probably ultimately environmental change that led to the extinction of these animals in the region but our research provides some of the first evidence that they may have actually co-existed," explains co-author Nathaniel R. Kitchel, the Robert A. 1925 and Catherine L. McKennan Postdoctoral Fellow in anthropology at Dartmouth.


The radiocarbon date for the Mount Holly mammoth of 12,800 years old overlaps with the accepted age of when humans may have initially settled in the region, which is thought to have occurred during the start of the Younger Dryas, a final pulse of glacial cold before temperatures warmed dramatically, marking the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age).

https://www.sott.net/article/449714-Woolly-mammoths-lived-alongside-first-humans-in-New-England

 

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[ToddsPoint]

I don't trust a RC date to determine whether they overlapped. Show me a mammoth skeleton with Clovis point in the ribs and we'll know for sure. Gary

 

[Charl]

Here is what I find odd about their claims. They say it is evidence that megafauna, the Woolly Mammoth specifically, was present with Paleo hunters in the New England states. They present it as evidence of human/ megafauna being contemporaneous in New England. Yet, is not the Mastadon also not an example of Pleistocene megafauna? I think so. And the reason I bring that up, is Mike Gramly, in excavating the Bowser Rd. Mastadon site in Orange County, New York, discovered clear evidence of human presence at the remains of the Bowser Rd. Mastadon during Paleo times. Well, the reason that is relevant here is the Bowser Rd. site is located very close to the border with Connecticut, a southern New England state. Very, very close. We know Paleo hunters were present in southern New England. Are we to believe that Mastadons, and other megafauna, would be right on the New York/New England boundaries, but somehow we needed this mammoth discovery to prove they likely also were present in New England (when Paleo hunters were also here, admittedly hunting mostly Caribou, as the Ma. Sugarloaf Site demonstrated)?



https://www.recorder.com/9-2-native-insight-12155124

https://www.recorder.com/LT-nativeinsight-110417-13477341

Again, humans and megafauna right on the southern New England/New York border. Humans hunting in New England at that time. But megafauna like Mastadons stopped at the border because, what, there was a Mastadon toll booth and they had no change??

Jason Lovett discovered the first true Clovis(Ross County variety) known from New England. Fluted points like Gainey are known here, and just slightly post-Clovis. But, according to Gramly, Jason’s find is the oldest fluted point so far known to science from the Ct. River Valley.

Further, we know mammoth teeth are brought up by trawlers all the time on the New England portion of the submerged continental shelf. Admittedly, every one of those teeth could be older than Clovis. I don’t have any data about the ages.

It’s a wonderful find, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think we need it to be certain Clovis and mammoths were, for a time, contemporaries in New England. Certainly Bowser Rd. would suggest Mastadons and humans were contemporaries here. They use the discovery to suggest megafauna, IN GENERAL, meaning not just mammoths, and humans, were contemporary in New England. Folks, we could already know megafauna and humans were in New England at the same time, I believe. My two centavos....

 

[Garscale]

Charl, you are no doubt correct. Likely a few thousand years earlier than has been proven as well.