May 15, 2016


News and Views


MY CIVIL LIBERTIES RANT FOR THE DAY


http://www.copblock.org/159924/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-good-cop/

What Does it Mean to Be a “Good” Cop?
BY LORELEI MCFLY
MAY 13, 2016

Great cartoon -- What Does it Mean to Be a “Good” Cop?


This is the first article in a series for National Police Week.

National Police Week (May 15-21 this year) is an annual event where police officers honor their fallen comrades and celebrate their dedication to upholding law and order by drunkenly running amok in our nation’s capital.

It also provides a timely opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a good cop. Aside from those who make the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty, surely the good cops are the ones who go on to have long lucrative careers in law enforcement, unmarred by serious disciplinary action, and who enjoy the esteem and protection of their fellow officers.

Our first shining example of a good cop who went above and beyond the call of duty is Barry Washington, who can even count a congressional tribute amongst the many accolades he received for his work as a tireless drug war crusader. Washington left a long, legendary career as a state trooper because he felt called by God to start a pioneering civil asset forfeiture program in small town Tenaha, Texas. During Washington’s tenure as Deputy City Marshal, Tenaha seized $3 million from motorists in at least 140 cases between 2006 and 2008. The motorists were persuaded to surrender their cash and other valuables under the threat of money laundering charges, and in some cases, losing custody of their children. A class action lawsuit against Washington and other officials involved in the highway robbery scheme was settled in 2012.

There’s also Anthony Raymond, a former police officer with the Nassau County and New York City Police Departments, who was decorated with at least 50 commendations and retired with a $123,303 annual pension in 2012. During his 29 years of dedicated service, he was also the subject of nearly 40 civilian complaints, and 5 lawsuits for use of excessive force and civil rights violations, 2 of which cost New York taxpayers a combined total of more than $3 million. In a 1995 incident where he was cleared of wrongdoing, Officer Raymond shot Christopher Wade to death, firing so many times that he had to stop and reload his gun.

Perhaps a better example is Officer Gildardo Sierrra, who has been with the Chicago Police Department since 2002. Some of the highlights of Sierra’s career include shooting three men, two of them fatally, in separate incidents in January, March, and June of 2011. In the June incident, he shot 29-year-old Flint Farmer 7 times after “mistaking” his cell phone for a gun. The final 3 shots, fired into Farmer’s back as he lay on the ground, were the fatal ones. The Cook County Prosecutor’s Office declined to press charges, because “not every mistake demands the action of the criminal justice system.” The city settled a lawsuit over Farmer’s death for $4.1 million. In 2016, a lawyer for the city resigned after a judge ruled that he had hidden evidence during another wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Darius Pinex, the man killed by Sierra in January, 2011.

Officer Sierra remains on the force, and the most recent payroll data shows his salary as $78,012 a year. The Citizens Police Data Project shows 9 complaints of misconduct against him.

These are just a handful of some of the most egregious cases of police misconduct and abuse, but all too often police officers who run afoul of the oaths they swore to obey, rather than having to face a reckoning for their bad acts, are protected and held blameless by their commanders and fellow officers, prosecutors and judges, and even a good portion of the public. Perhaps the definition of what it means to be a good cop looks vastly different depending on what side of the thin blue line you are standing on.

The next few posts in this series will examine the cases of several good cops in the traditional sense— officers who didn’t turn a blind eye to injustice and took action to protect the innocent. In the meantime, share your stories about “good cops” behaving badly on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtags of #NPW16 and #NationalPoliceWeek.


“Be sure to read the other articles in the series: NPW16 Good Cop of the Day: James Berghaier. The next few posts in this series will examine the cases of several good cops in the traditional sense— officers who didn’t turn a blind eye to injustice and took action to protect the innocent.” Today’s article goes into bad cops, but the remainder will focus on how police can and should operate. Go to Copblock to read further. One such case that I remember a few months ago focused on an incident in which another policeman who wasn’t even the supervisor took the simple action of telling the out of control cop to stop, and took his rifle away from him. Luckily this good cop was not punished for that action by his higher ups. Some have been.

I know this article will seem unforgivably biased to some, but in my opinion the fact that police are most of the time and in most places (around the world, I suspect) held to no personal behavior standards while on duty is really a sign of “unforgivable” bias from the “conservative” side of our populations. Well trained police officers definitely can do their job without shooting first and asking questions later – a better job, in fact. Remember in the old TV shows when they used to chase the suspect down and tackle him like a football player? I want to see more of that (assuming they don’t beat and kick him unmercifully after they catch him.) I want to see them become more involved with getting to know people in the communities which they SERVE and seeing that homeless, insane, depressed and drug addicted people get into a mental health program where they may very well be cured, etc.

I’m going to look at this site regularly from now on and publish more of their articles. I want to see their upcoming articles on the REAL “good cops.” Just because I’m on a roll with this, I’m going to include below another article from this week’s publication:


http://www.copblock.org/160015/judge-rules-against-city-of-ferguson-in-3-protester-arrest-cases/

Judge Rules Against City of Ferguson in Three Protester Arrest Cases
MAY 13, 2016 BY BRIAN SUMNER 21 COMMENTS

A judge has ruled against the City of Ferguson in three cases where protesters were arrested after a prayer vigil after the death of Mike Brown, who was murdered by police in Ferguson Missouri.

Keith Rose, Michael Lhotak and Jasmine Woods were all charged with failure to comply with officers’ orders. This charge is a catch all allowing officers to arrest people for anything and the US Justice Department ruled Ferguson routinely abused this charge.

The defendants were represented by Justin Farishon, an attorney with the nonprofit Arch City Defenders. Keith Rose was found not guilty. The judge went even farther in the other two cases granting motions for a judgment of acquittal. When these are granted it means that in the face of the evidence any reasonable person would find the defendant not guilty.

The cases were tried last month and were an expensive, embarrassing failure for the city. Not only was the city unable to produce any witness who could verify the alleged crimes but no one could even say that the defendants had heard the dispersal order.

City Attorney Stephanie Karr, said in an email, that violations of law are “contrary to the public health, safety and welfare. Therefore, the public interest is served by taking action to prevent further violations of the law by making offenders accountable.”

If a crime had actually been committed I would be inclined to agree with her, however dragging three innocent people to a cage charging them an arbitrary disobedience crime does nothing to hold anyone accountable. Instead of focusing on the protesters who refuse to comply with the wishes of strangers she should have been focused on pursuing charges against the criminal cops who used a badge and a gun to maintain a stranglehold on the town of Ferguson

J. Patrick Chassaing also served as a prosecutor and admitted that the prosecution was about preventing protesters from assembling again.

He said in a statement, “These cases were pursued in order to deter others participating in future protests from assuming there are no limits or parameters to their activities…”

No wonder they lost their case. The prosecution was trying to charge anyone for committing a crime, they were trying to use institutionalized force and violence to make an example out of Keith Rose, Michael Lhotak and Jasmine Woods and hopefully deter another gathering.

The City of Ferguson is currently looking for new prosecutors and is trying to distance itself from the previous firm of attorneys, Curtis, Heinz, Garrett and O’Keefe. The firm may have overcharged the city for it’s work on the cases as legal fees doubled and the total bill so far is over $60,000, $30,000 of which is for these failure to comply tickets.

If Karr had been able to obtain a guilty verdict the legal fees rendered to the city have been $150 each or a total of $450.

Karr was singled out for her involvement in the Ferguson Municipal Court’s massive constitutional violations. The city has said it is considering appointing an interim prosecutor while it searches for a new one.

If you are ever forced to serve on a jury where the defendant is being charged with some form of victimless action, vote not guilty. A victim requires a crime and regardless of what you are told it is your duty to vote for what is right instead of what is allowed.


Who are Arch City Defenders? -- Go to http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_938e3a48-0a5b-11e5-9c29-a3b76ee8868a.html. Selection:

“….Before Ferguson exploded in the fall, Strode said he might have pursued a career in Washington, D.C., where he had worked the past two summers – including an internship with the Department of Justice in the civil rights division’s voting section. However, the police brutality cases in Ferguson, Cleveland and Baltimore became a “defining theme” for many of his classmates, he said, and they spent their last year in law school holding “die-ins” and questioning the legal system.

“For a lot of students, it changed our focus, and it changed the kind of work that was being done by students,” he said. “It changed our conception of justice so that people saw the legal imperfections in lot of ways – which is huge and the first step in creating change. That’s what’s happening in St. Louis.”
Strode has decided to return to St. Louis to work with the Arch City Defenders, the nonprofit that has pushed for systematic reform of municipal courts in Missouri. Strode said there’s a lot of energy focused on building a more equitable region in his hometown, and he wants to be part of “harnessing” that energy towards helping marginalized residents. That’s one of the things that drew him to Arch City Defenders, he said. The nonprofit provides legal aid to such residents, including homeless, battered spouses, veterans and low-income residents.”



BLM is important, but so are groups like this who don’t get in the news as often. That includes Southern Poverty Law Center and ACLU, and undoubtedly more, which bring INFORMATION to the public eye and defend the needy in law courts. This whole problem is so intricate that it is really hard to tackle and reform, from unsupervised police officers to the legislature and governors in some states. We need more federal laws redefining and strengthening the rules of the road for police officers, and more enforcement. For that we need to elect more liberal judges, mayors, city councilmen, police department officials, and so on. The support of real “law and order” just isn’t there in too many cases. I hope for great improvement in the near future!



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bob-gates-donald-trump-national-security-past-presidents/

Bob Gates on how Trump stands out from past presidents
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS FACE THE NATION
May 15, 2016, 9:15 AM


Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates has worked with eight presidents, Republican and Democrat--and the biggest difference between them and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is that they all were "willing to listen," he said in an interview airing Sunday.

In working for presidents as ideologically diverse as Gates has--from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush to President Obama--Gates said all of those men were willing to accept advice from others.

"The difference is each one of those presidents, as strong-minded as each of them was, understood he did not have all the answers and surrounded himself with experienced, thoughtful people who would give good advice," Gates said in an interview in Williamsburg, Va., with moderator John Dickerson of CBS' "Face the Nation." "And they were willing to listen."

Trump, though, has a go-it-alone mentality that could be harmful if he's elected president, Gates said.

"I guess one of the things that makes it challenging for me is that he seems to think that he has all the answers and that he doesn't need advice from staff or anybody else," he said.

Gates outlined his concerns with Trump's positions on national security issues, as well as his temperament.

"Well, I have some real issues with things he's said about national security policy and some concerns--I think there are some contradictions," he said.

Gates specifically referenced Trump's stance toward China, as well his plan to defeat ISIS and his past praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"You can't have a trade war with China and then turn around and ask them to help you on North Korea," he said. "I have no idea what his policy would be in terms of dealing with ISIS. I worry a little bit about his admiration for Vladimir Putin."

Gates said he doubts that he could ever serve in a Trump administration. "I learned a long time ago never to say never, but let's just say that would be inconceivable to me," Gates said.

Another reason Gates may be reluctant to commit, however, is his age. "Before the election, I will be 73, and let's just say I have stopped working on my resume," he said.

Asked about Trump's proposed Muslim ban--which the candidate has attempted to walk back in recent days--Gates said it may be a "great sound bite," but in reality is is "unworkable" and "contrary to all of our values."

"We've never done anything like that in our whole history, of singling out a religion and saying, 'The criterion for you getting in or out of this country is your religion.' But besides that, how do you tell?" he asked. "You don't -- are we going to start marking religion on passports? There's some precedent for that and it's all ugly. Are we going to have an interview? I mean, you or I could be Muslim. And are we going to get through that filter? Are they going to actually ask people what their religion is at the border?"

Dickerson asked Gates about the recent New York Times profile of deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, which described Rhodes' work in selling the Iran deal to the public, which implied he might have misled people in the process.

"Well, I didn't have that sense. I thought some of the things the White House was saying, in terms of believing that lifting the sanctions could over time lead the regime and Iran to change its stripes and become a normal country, if you will, I always thought that was a stretch," he said. "But I didn't have the sense that people were being manipulated. That was news to me from that article."

He said Obama himself is very open to hearing "honest" opinions, even if they're different than his own.

"I found President Obama very welcoming of honest and candid points of view. He and I would have some very direct conversations in private," Gates said. "And he more often than not would end them, and sometimes we disagreed very strongly, and he would end them by standing up, smiling and saying, 'Are you sure I can't get you to stay another year?'"

Gates said presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is ultimately more "hawkish" than Mr. Obama.

"It was my experience in working with her that she was very tough minded. And, for example, when General McChrystal was asking for 40,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, she was very tough in support of what the general wanted. She also was an advocate for going into Libya," he said. "So I suspect, although we have not had a conversation since I left in almost five years, I would suspect that generally speaking, she is more hawkish than President Obama."

And asked if Clinton can handle the job of the presidency, Gates replied: "Yeah."

"I think it also depends in her case, who is she going to surround herself with? And what are the policy options she's going to pursue?" he continued. "What are -- what would be her alternatives in places like Syria and with ISIS and how to deal with Putin and the Chinese and so on? And we just haven't heard much of that."



“Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates has worked with eight presidents, Republican and Democrat--and the biggest difference between them and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is that they all were "willing to listen," he said in an interview airing Sunday. …. "You can't have a trade war with China and then turn around and ask them to help you on North Korea," he said. "I have no idea what his policy would be in terms of dealing with ISIS. I worry a little bit about his admiration for Vladimir Putin." …. Asked about Trump's proposed Muslim ban--which the candidate has attempted to walk back in recent days--Gates said it may be a "great sound bite," but in reality is [sic] is "unworkable" and "contrary to all of our values." "We've never done anything like that in our whole history, of singling out a religion and saying, 'The criterion for you getting in or out of this country is your religion.' But besides that, how do you tell?" he asked. "You don't -- are we going to start marking religion on passports? There's some precedent for that and it's all ugly. Are we going to have an interview? I mean, you or I could be Muslim. And are we going to get through that filter? Are they going to actually ask people what their religion is at the border?" …. And asked if Clinton can handle the job of the presidency, Gates replied: "Yeah." "I think it also depends in her case, who is she going to surround herself with? And what are the policy options she's going to pursue?" he continued. "What are -- what would be her alternatives in places like Syria and with ISIS and how to deal with Putin and the Chinese and so on? And we just haven't heard much of that."


Gates is a Republican, but clearly not a wild-eyed Tea Partier and he is not aligned against basic civil rights. He approves, at least partly, of Hillary as President but would like to hear more about her platform ideas. I agree with him. She hasn’t given as many specific policy statements as Sanders, which may be her strategic technique rather than an oversight. I am also glad to hear his reply about Trump’s apparent “admiration” of Putin and willingness to break off relationships with China. I think most Americans see Putin as a direct threat and China as a trading partner with differences, which is important. I would hate to see Trump going rogue and teaming up with Putin to grab more territory than he already has. Trump sounds like an isolationist and that is an invitation to worse international relations rather than better. We can have disagreements with nations without dropping the relationship entirely and perhaps even having a war of some sort – trade, military or cyberwar. One of my problems with Trump is that the limits of his behavior are not apparent to me. His talk has been, until recently when he seems to have started listening a little bit to his advisors, so lacking in my view of any deep thought whatsoever, that I’m afraid of what he might come up with next. I love the term “loose cannon,” and that is exactly what he is.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ancient-artifacts-found-in-florida-sinkhole-could-rewrite-pre-clovis-history/

Artifacts found in Florida sinkhole could rewrite history
CBS/AP
May 13, 2016, 4:11 PM

Photograph -- In this 2015 photo provided by Texas A&M's Center for the Study of the First Americans, divers investigate the Page-Ladson archaeological site in Florida. Scientists say artifacts found deep underwater in a Florida sinkhole show people lived in that area some 14,500 years ago. S. JOY/CSFA VIA AP
Photograph -- ap16133808195479.jpg, This 2015 photo provided by Texas A&M's Center for the Study of the First Americans, shows researchers at the Page-Ladson archaeological site in Florida. (CSFA VIA AP)

Scientists say a stone knife and other artifacts found deep underwater in a Florida sinkhole show people lived in that area some 14,500 years ago.

That makes the ancient sinkhole the earliest well-documented site for human presence in the southeastern U.S., and important for understanding the settling of the Americas, experts said.

The findings confirm claims made more than a decade ago about the site, some 30 miles southeast of Tallahassee. At that time, researchers reported evidence that humans were there some 14,400 years ago. But in an era when such an old date was widely considered impossible, other experts disputed the evidence, said Mike Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station.

The sinkhole was "just politely ignored," he said.

Waters was among a new team of scientists who excavated there from 2012 to 2014. They report finding the knife and stone flakes in a paper released Friday by the journal Science Advances. The new work offers "far better" evidence for early humans than the earlier research did, he said.

The sinkhole is nearly 200 feet wide. In ancient times, it had a shallow pond at the bottom. That offered fresh water and a gathering point for animals, which "probably would have been easy pickings" for hunters who saw them trapped in the deep depression, Waters said.

Today, the sinkhole is filled with about 30 feet of water, and it took divers equipped with head-mounted lights to look for artifacts. It was "as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all," said Jessi Halligan, the lead diving scientist and an assistant professor of anthropology at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

They found the knife while digging with a trowel. It's a couple of inches long and about an inch wide, sharpened on both sides.

To determine its age, the researchers used nearby mastodon dung, which contained twigs that could be analyzed. The twigs, and therefore the knife, were found to be about 14,550 years old.

Man-made stone flakes were found to be about the same age. The scientists also examined a mastodon tusk recovered in 1993, and confirmed that its long, deep grooves were made by people, probably as they worked to remove the tusk from a skull.

The first people in North America are thought to have crossed a now-submerged land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. From there, people spread southward. Waters said the age of the sinkhole artifacts adds to evidence that people may have migrated south from Alaska as early as 16,000 years ago by boat along the coast, because inland Canada was blocked by ice sheets until 2,000 years later.

Halligan said the ancient visitors to the sinkhole could have been the Southeast's first snowbirds, moving south for the winter and north for the summer. They could have followed mastodons, whose remains have been found as far north as Kentucky, she said.

"They were very smart about local plants and local animals and migration patterns," she said.

In American archaeology, sites showing signs of human presence more than about 13,000 years are called "pre-Clovis," since they predate the Clovis era of widespread human occupation.

Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History said that he ranked the sinkhole with two locations in Pennsylvania and Virginia as "the best-dated and oldest pre-Clovis sites yet found in North America."

While the other two sites are older, "the Florida site has a major role to play in learning the story of the peopling of the Americas," said Stanford, who didn't participate in the research.

FSU Lead Diver Jessi Halligan told CBS affiliate WCTV in Tallahassee the items date back to 14,550 years ago, "The day we found that artifact we were really excited because there's absolutely no way that stone knife wasn't made by people."

This puts people here 1,500 years earlier than previous research by scientists.

WCTV talked with Morgan Smith by Skype, he's a doctoral student at Texas A&M who helped with the dive, "I started breathing really fast underwater, like sucking through my air and I just had to control myself."

He remembers the exact moment a team member showed him the ancient find during the dive.

"The moment he showed it to me I couldn't even believe it. So I just turned away like, yeah whatever. Then he was like no I really did find this! I was like are you serious? It was a really intense moment; it was really fun!"

Another expert, James Adovasio of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton agreed, saying it promises to shed light on "early Native American lifestyle in an environment where these lifestyles are very poorly defined."



EXCERPTS -- “Waters was among a new team of scientists who excavated there from 2012 to 2014. They report finding the knife and stone flakes in a paper released Friday by the journal Science Advances. The new work offers "far better" evidence for early humans than the earlier research did, he said. …. Today, the sinkhole is filled with about 30 feet of water, and it took divers equipped with head-mounted lights to look for artifacts. It was "as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all," said Jessi Halligan, the lead diving scientist and an assistant professor of anthropology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. They found the knife while digging with a trowel. It's a couple of inches long and about an inch wide, sharpened on both sides. …. To determine its age, the researchers used nearby mastodon dung, which contained twigs that could be analyzed. The twigs, and therefore the knife, were found to be about 14,550 years old. Man-made stone flakes were found to be about the same age. The scientists also examined a mastodon tusk recovered in 1993, and confirmed that its long, deep grooves were made by people, probably as they worked to remove the tusk from a skull. …. Halligan said the ancient visitors to the sinkhole could have been the Southeast's first snowbirds, moving south for the winter and north for the summer. They could have followed mastodons, whose remains have been found as far north as Kentucky, she said. "They were very smart about local plants and local animals and migration patterns," she said. …. Another expert, James Adovasio of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton agreed, saying it promises to shed light on "early Native American lifestyle in an environment where these lifestyles are very poorly defined."


“…researchers used nearby mastodon dung …” – Ah, the joys of an archaeologist’s life! Digging into old dung! There is a very large sinkhole like this between here and Gainesville which I’ve visited called “The Devil’s Millhopper.” It’s way, way deeper than 30 feet, though I don’t remember exactly how deep. There is a stream running through it at the bottom, but not a deep pool or pond like this one. The state has built wooden steps on which you can walk right down to the water. I wonder if scientists have examined that one for artifacts.

Dating and verifying information is always difficult and often ends in squabbles over the information that can be gained from the evidence. The statement that man-made chips had been found and that the knife was well sharpened is key, because whether or not an indeterminate piece of rock is or is not manmade, or whether the rocks are clearly related to each other and especially to the dung, are subjects that will certainly have been questioned. They weren’t embedded in it, after all.

One much earlier possible site was found 20 or so years ago on the west coast of South America -- Pedra Furada in northeastern Brazil to be exact -- having charcoal, which when carbon dated, proved to be around 30,000 years ago. Scholars (and rivals) picked it apart, however, as being unproven. Was it from a hearth fire, or a forest fire? Scientists are arguing about this site to this day. (SEE the website “mathildasanthropologyblog” below on the 30,000 BP dating from a recent estimation.) Besides all that, archaeology graduate students have been taught for years that there couldn’t have been humans in North America before 11,000 BP, so they tend to believe it like Christians believe in the parting of the Red Sea for the Israelites to cross out of Egypt. Therefore, a human site from 20,000 years earlier has never been accepted.

There is also a set of bones discovered in the Great Lakes area, (Minnesota, maybe?), which is also old, though in the range of 13,000 BP, and at least one archaeologist has claimed that they were not Native American bones at all, but more similar to the Ainu of Japan! Well, why not, it’s farther to travel, but it would have been by sea and the ice bridge wouldn’t have been a barrier. Boats and rafts of a primitive sort were made in recent times by South American Indians by the old method of burning the inside of a log and then digging it out with a stone tool to form a place for the rider to sit. That was captured on camera on one of my Discovery Channel videos about ten years ago. American Indians were observed doing that by early white explorers as well. It’s simple to think of -- logs are observed to be floating down a river, so a hollow log becomes a way to travel. When we’re looking into the possibilities on things like this we need to “think outside the box” like Sherlock Holmes. “White people” have tended to think that non-whites couldn’t have figured that out for themselves, and that is a terrible fallacy leading to lots of current human relationship problems! There are many lessons to learn from archaelogy!


About the 30,000 BP site in Brazil, see this by Mathilda:

https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/the-oldest-human-site-known-in-the-americas/

Mathilda’s Anthropology Blog.
Just another WordPress.com weblog

“The oldest human site known in the Americas.
Posted on March 10, 2008 | 4 Comments

"Personally, I think there’s an excellent chance these ‘Paleoindians’ were part of the an early colonisation wave out of Africa, that came over the Atlantic by accident on one of the Westward currents. Their morpology is extremely archaic, especially the skull thickness and teeth.

http://www.athenapub.com/10pfurad.htm

Pedra Furada in northeastern Brazil represents possibly the oldest known human site in the Americas. Since C-14 dates of 48-32,000 BP were reported in a Nature article (Guidon and Delibrias 1986), the site’s Paleoindian components have been highly controversial, challenged (though not refuted) by many North American researchers (e.g. Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay 1994). Yet the site has solid evidence of non-Clovis, Paleoindian occupations including human remains, plus a unique rock painting tradition from at least 12,000-6,000 BP. In March, 2002, Athena Review (AR) asked archaeologist Niède Guidon and her colleagues to explain the current status of the findings, including both Paleoindian skeletal and subsistence remains, and the abundant rock paintings at Serra da Capivara National Park, which contains Pedra Furada (figs.1,2). Much of the interview is given here (for full text, see printed issue of AR, V3, no.2)
. . . . Dating of Pedra Furada:

AR: Based on your 1986 Nature article and several recent web reports, your sites have a wide range of dates, some as early as 48-30,000 years BP with two hearth samples dated at 32,000 BP, and evidence of cave painting (a fragment with two ochre-drawn lines) associated with a 17,000 year old C-14 dated hearth. How are these dates holding up as your work progresses?

Niède Guidon: These dates are holding well. Once we learned that the Department of Earth Sciences of the Australian National University had developed a new chemical technique to decontaminate small quantities of charcoal to be dated by AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry), we sent samples to Canberra from the same charcoal dated in 1988/91 by the Gif laboratory in France. The results are given here by Dr. Guaciara M. dos Santos.

Guaciara dos Santos: A comprehensive chronology of human activity at the Boqueirão da Pedra Furada (BPF) site, the oldest archaeological site found at the Capivara National Park (fig.3), has been established by reliable radiocarbon dates on charcoal excavated from different levels. The sub-phase BPF 1, the lowest layer with definite evidence of human activity in the Pedra Furada Rock Shelter, gave radiocarbon results ranging from 35,000 to greater than 48,000 BP (Guidon and Arnaud 1991; Parenti 1996). For the oldest samples, the 48,000 lower limit is imposed by the residuals remaining after conventional acid-wash or acid-base-acid chemical pre-treatments. These pre-treatments are intended to decontaminate samples with traces of extraneous, more modern carbon which may be present, as the result of exposure of charcoal in this layer to the environment.

. . . . A total of seven charcoal samples from hearths at site BPF 1 were subjected to the full ABOX-SC procedure and their radiocarbon contents were determined by accelerator mass spectrometry at the Australian National University. Five of the samples proved to be even beyond the limit of this new technique, returning ages of greater than 56,000 BP. Finite ages of 53,000 and 55,000 BP were obtained for the remaining two (Santos et al., in manuscript).

These new results push back the time of human occupation at the Pedra Furada site by at least another 8,000 years relative to the previous results. Hence, it appears that humans were already at this site about 60,000 years ago, and possibly even earlier.

Fabio Parenti: The radiocarbon dates at the site of Pedra Furada, totaling 52 in my final report (Parenti, in press) are fully confirmed by new AMS techniques, especially for the oldest unit, Pedra Furada 1, which is now dated to at least 50,000 years BP.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture, named after distinct stone tools found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s. The Clovis culture appears around 11,500–11,000 uncal RCYBP[1] (uncalibrated radiocarbon years before present), at the end of the last glacial period, and is characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest that this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,200 to 12,900 calendar years ago. Clovis people are considered to be the ancestors of most of the indigenous cultures of the Americas.[2][3][4]

The only human burial that has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture included the remains of an infant boy named Anzick-1.[5][6] Researchers from the United States and Europe conducted paleogenetic research on Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA.[7] The results of these analyses reveal that Anzick-1 is closely related to modern Native American populations, which lends support to the Beringia hypothesis for the peopling of the Americas.[8]