By Jim Windle with files from AP
UTAH – With all of the archaeology pointing in other directions, is it time to stop teaching people that North America was inhabited by migrants crossing the Bering Strait land bridge from Asia some 12,000 years ago?
As we published recently in a four part series, evidence of Early Man in southwestern Ontario can be traced through stone tool artifacts to between 100,000 and 200,000 years old (see our In Print button on our Two Row Times website).
The latest discovery to question the Bering Strait theory is in Utah at the Hill Air Force Base where excavations uncovered a tribal fire pit, tools, a spear tip and tobacco seeds tested to date back 12,300 years.
“When you come across a find like that, it’s obviously very exciting,” said Cultural Resource Manager Anya Kitterman. “You’re getting a real picture of the history of this land. It’s an unbelievable feeling. We’ve been looking for something major like this for years.”
Although not nearly as old as archeologist Ilse Kraemer’s find on the escarpment near Hagersville, Ontario, which was rejected by most of the North American archaeological fraternity, it is significant, showing humans inhabited the Utah region, far from the Pacific coast, in early times.
Tests conducted on the Kraemer “Desert Painted” stone tools by European university archaeologists not encumbered by the Bering Strait hypothesis, have accepted the age of her find as being more than 100,000 years old and possibly as old as 200,000 years.
European and Middle Easters archaeologists have been tracing the path of Early Man through cave dwellings and bones of large now extinct animals showing evidence of flesh being cut from the bone by man made tools, have found Kraemer’s red stained tools to be consistent with very early ancient times.
Cultural and natural resources manager for the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, Patty Timbimboo-Madsen, said tribes care about findings and are glad work is being done to preserve such history.
“It’s another piece of evidence that says we did exist, we did live here, and we had an impact,” she said. “It’s a testament to our people and the role we had. That’s important.”
Since publishing our articles on the Kraemer find, there have been more than 12,090 reads on our website plus our full 60,000 in hard copy readership.
“I have gotten a lot of phone calls and visits since those articles appeared,” says Kraemer. She is still getting calls of inquiry from around the world.
Kraemer, a German national, now in her 80s, was so disappointed in having her important and historical find rejected by the Canadian and most American archaeologists, she gave up her archaeological work, instead, turning her sights towards environmental concerns.
But since TRT published its series on her finds, and with more and more finds casting shadows on the Bering Strait theory as the only entry point into North America by Early Man, Kraemer feels somewhat vindicated that her amazing find is proof that Early Man inhabited the Great Lakes region millenniums before the land bridge was created after the last ice age.
For more on this story, go to www.tworowtimes.com and click, “In Print” on the top banner. Look for issues published June 8, June 15, June 22, and June 29.
