this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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New discoveries from several archaeological sites in North and South America suggest that ancient people first arrived in the New World much earlier than scientists once thought.

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[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Bro, coexisting with giant sloths and mastodons sounds pretty fucking cool not going to lie.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Giant sloths were terrifying. Built like a tank and had hands strong enough to claw through literal bedrock to make their caves.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 6 months ago

Yeah but maybe I could make friends with one and he'd protect me and we'd go on adventures and solve mysteries

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 9 points 6 months ago

I wonder how long it took them to do so.

[–] ChaoticCookie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago

Why don’t we do that?

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago (2 children)

For a long time, scientists believed the first humans to arrive in the Americas soon killed off these giant ground sloths through hunting, along with many other massive animals like mastodons, saber-toothed cats and dire wolves that once roamed North and South America.

But new research from several sites is starting to suggest that people came to the Americas earlier — perhaps far earlier — than once thought. These findings hint at a remarkably different life for these early Americans, one in which they may have spent millennia sharing prehistoric savannas and wetlands with enormous beasts.

“There was this idea that humans arrived and killed everything off very quickly — what’s called ‘Pleistocene overkill,'” said Daniel Odess, an archaeologist at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. But new discoveries suggest that “humans were existing alongside these animals for at least 10,000 years, without making them go extinct.”

It’s true. There was a time before the Complete Fucking Assholes showed up.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

dire wolves

Wait, dire wolves were real?

[–] KAYDUBELL@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz 3 points 6 months ago

End boss, fucking unit.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and a few other fantastical-sounding creatures GRRM put in there, like Zorses.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago

I think I've seen the illustrations of zorses

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 months ago (3 children)

And then the Republicans showed up, I assume

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago

"Giant welfare sloths eating up all our fields of lavender!!"

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Well . . . yes

[–] grue@lemmy.world 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

"Coexisted" with giant sloths and mastodons? Nah, now we've just got a better idea of what caused their extinction.

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 6 points 6 months ago

And dire wolves!

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The phrase "peaceful coexistence" implies the existence of a darker, "violent coexistence."

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago

Violent coexistence is what the Greeks and Turks currently have.

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 15 points 6 months ago

Every time there is new research into this topic, we learned that people have been in the Americas for far longer than we had thought. Pretty cool.

These artifacts from Santa Elina are roughly 27,000 years old — more than 10,000 years before scientists once thought that humans arrived in the Americas.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

When is the Netflix series please?

[–] Not_mikey@slrpnk.net 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not Netflix but pbs has a YouTube channel for shit like this called "eons". Pretty good ~10 min videos about paleontolgy, archeology, pre-history etc.

[–] TwanHE@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Stefan Milo on youtube is also a great channel on discussing these types of papers

[–] icanred@lemm.ee -1 points 6 months ago

There are already two seasons. It’s called “Ancient Apocalypse.”

[–] thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure there was some interbreding with the giant sloths as well

[–] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 3 points 6 months ago

I see you, too, have met my cousin...

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 points 6 months ago

The Fediverse is old

I thought this was obvious: avocado seeds are large because they were eaten by giant sloths. It would surely be much more difficult for an avocado tree to reproduce without the involvement of an animal, and giant sloths are not around anymore, so at some point humans must have taken over from the giant sloths, so there was probably some place where humans and giant sloths lived at the same time.

[–] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Makes sense. There is evidence that 21k years ago there were people in Argentina eating basically anything that moved

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-tceWbJxIm/