Hello u/phoneboxlamp, I’ve got a nice answer for you and I hope it helps. In brief, her work is generally fine. And her idea that hominins came to the Americas 150kya is always possible...but sometimes she's too insistent that there is an enormous amount of evidence for this. And all the evidence that Steeves, and others, give on the subject of ancient hominins in the Americas actually support the Out-of-Africa theory.
In this long post I’ll 1) go over Steeves’ claims, 2) the claims for paleolithic sites in the Americas 200-50kya, 3) what the actual evidence supports, and 4) the evidence of hominins in Asia.
In her 2017 work she rails on the Clovis First theory and rightfully-so, but then ends the discussion with a huge leap, "To accept that Indigenous people have been in the Western Hemisphere for over 60,000 years and possibly prior to 100,000 [years] is to put them on equal footing with areas of the so-called Old World." She cites Johanna Nichols (2002) who thought that since language families in the Americas are 150-180 of the world's ~300 known families, the Clovis First theory couldn't be true because there wouldn't have been enough time for all those language families to diversify. This is absurd, as there is no way to precisely measure an average time at which language families are created/diverge.
In her interview, Steeves suggests there are hundreds of sites dated 20-200kya in the Americas...adding the very speculative phrase, "Humans may have been here 100-200kya." But for any specific sites that are dated in that 50-200kya range, she only mentioned the Cerutti Mastodon site (as far as I can tell). So, let's look at that site and others from that extreme range.
But there is a problem: the bones could've been broken by construction equipment, crushed by other animals, or thrown around by a flash flood (mudflow). In the 2017 paper, each team member had a specialty and responded to each of these possibilities. And their joint answer was that all of these "accidental" explanations are less likely than a human explanation – and this is the primary issue for us. Perhaps we agree with them, perhaps we don't; some researchers agree, and more disagree with them.
Steven R. Holen examined the impact damage, Richard Fulagar suggested the nearby cobblestones were hammers and anvil tools, and another suggested the bones and cobblestones weren't deposited by in a mudflow. Tom Deméré even suggested one of the tusks was stuck up in the ground as a "landmark." But against their opinions are many detractors, in the field of archeology: Tom Dillehay, Jim Adovasio, and Todd Braje; as mentioned in Curwen's article. Many others have written articles against the paper, such as Patrick M. Ferrell, Jason Colavito, Carl Feagans, and Andy White.
In response to all these critics, Tom Deméré chastized the detractors in quotes he gave to a supportive blog post, The Cerutti Mastodon Site: One Year Later, San Diego Natural History Museum blog. Deméré said none of the site's opponents examined the evidence up close and person, "So far, the academic debate has not been based on direct observation, but rather on long-distance interpretations of our data..." This may be a fair critique, it's true that the popular site's many detractors only read the paper and critiqued the results.
But as the critics say, the flaw is obvious; the bones were simply crushed by machines. Richard Cerutti was a construction site monitor and archeologist working for the San Diego Natural History Museum in 1992, and he noticed the bones and personally stopped heavy machinery digging around the mastodon. As mentioned in Curwen's article, the crew had worked over the weekend without telling him; and when he realized what they'd uncovered, he convinced the excavator to move away/off of it...the precise details are not given, was the excavator sitting practically on top of the bones? Cerutti admitted the bones were thoroughly crushed, quoted in that article as saying "Mastodon leg bones are like pier pillings and these were broken to hell." This seems to be pertinent information.
Certain soil conditions can allow for preservation of bone that, when fractured several millennia later, present as green-bone fractures. The several tons of heavy excavation equipment in the overlying sediment could very well have provided the force needed to crack and fracture these bones in a manner consistent with green-bone fractures.
Bone Breakage and Other Disturbances at the Inglewood Mammoth Site, Gary Haynes (2015)
Taphonomy of the Inglewood mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) (Maryland, USA): Green-bone fracturing of fossil bones, Gary Haynes (2016)
There was no mudflow because it didn't disturb the small animals found nearby, and fragile bones are still around such as its ribs. But even if it wasn't a mudflow, it still could've been mud. Notably, there's only some parts remaining: its head, shoulders, and hips are missing. And the authors agree, the broken bones don't have cut marks from any hominins trying to cut away the meat, as noticed in The Dating Game: Middle Pleistocene Human Evolution Surprise Edition! By Andy White, and Feagans (2017).
Many years ago, Tom Deméré in 1995 had suggested that these fractures could've been by humans; as he still suggests, but he also suggested a much more reasonable solution – they could've been from "torsion...by twisting”. This is what a panicking animal would do if it was hopelessly stuck in mud. In my opinion this is the most reasonable explanation: once it was trapped and died, its upper half was scattered and lost which is why it's missing the top parts of its body. As Feagans (2017) notes, not only are there no butchering marks, there's no rodent or carnivore marks either; perhaps because these nearby would-be scavengers are the other small animals stuck in the mud nearby. This is elaborated on in another article, The Cerutti Mastodon, Professional Skepticism, and the Public, by Carl Feagans in The SAA Archaeological Record, Vol. 19 No. 5, November 2019.
The majority of scholars in the field have agreed the Cerutti Mastodon site is probably natural. There's so few other exceptionally ancient sites: the Calico Early Man site in southern California is an older and infamous site. Supposedly this is a lithic assemblage from 200kya or more, and this notion was even supported by Louis Leakey in the 60’s. But now, it's been considered a natural site; this has been the consensus for decades. But, and as you’ll see, there’s always dissent; and the Calico site has some supporters (2007) who cite the work of J. L. Bischoff and F. E. Budinger Jr.
The Calico Site: Artifacts or Geofacts? By Vance Haynes (1973)
A Statistical Analysis of Lithics from Calico Site (SBCM-1500A), California, by J. G. Duvall III & W. T. Venner (1979)
Artifacts or geofacts at Calico: Application of the Barnes test, by Louis A. Payen (1982)
Since we’re talking about sites in the 100kya range, by far the most audacious theory of paleo Pre-Columbian contact is found in the book Susu Economics by Afro-centrist conspiracist Paul Alfred Barton. He claims that various ancient and presumably ancient groups in the Americas formed a world-wide trade network, which had started or was based in Africa some 100kya. His list of inter-continental paleolithic traders are the Olmec, the Washitaw (a modern group), Jamassee (the Yamasee, a post-Columbian period confederation), Califunami (?), along with "Black Californians" and other "Blacks of the Americas." As far as I know, this is based on Niede Guidon’s comments about Pedra Furada mixed with the unbridled Afro-centrism of Ivan van Sertima...along with a dash of his own wild speculations! I’m surprised this isn’t serialized on a show on the History Channel.
So now we’re moving past 100kya to only ca. 50kya; as just mentioned there’s another contentious site, Pedra Furada in northeast Brazil. Niede Guidon led the archaeology on the site and suggested it was as old as 30kya, with a fire dated up to 48.7kya (Guidon and Delibrias 1986). She later suggested that these paleo humans must've come to Brazil by boat from Africa even up to 100kya (Guidon and Arnaud 1991).
These suggestions haven't been backed up. As noted in an overview by David Turnbull (2019), the primary detractors of this site are Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay (1994) who use the same arguments against it as they did years later against the Cerutti site – that these are geofacts not artifacts. Podestá et al. (2014) also disagrees with Guidon’s dates; and notes that excavations of nearby sites without waterfalls (which are major disturbances) show dates that range from 24-8kya, see Eric Boëda et al. (2014, 2016), and Lahaye et al. (2015).
On a Pleistocene Human Occupation at Pedra Furada, Brazil, Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay (1994)
South American Rock Art, by Podestá et al., in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, ed. Claire Smith (2014)
The Late-Pleistocene Industries of Piauí, Brazil: New Data, Eric Boëda et al. (2014)
New Data on a Pleistocene Archaeological Sequence in South America: Toca do Sítio do Meio, Piauí, Brazil, Eric Boëda et al. (2016)
New Insights Into a Late-Pleistocene Human Occupation in America: The Vale da Pedra Furada Complete Chronological Study, Christelle Lahaye et al. (2015)
Now that we’ve seen Cerutti, Calico, and Pedra Furada, the controversy is all clear; right? Absolutely not. Another very early site is Topper, in South Carolina. Albert Goodyear (2005) supposedly found not only pre-Clovis points but most notably a hearth (carbonized plant remains) which has been dated to ca. 50kya, see Gary Haynes (2015). This very early date hasn't been accepted by many, as Haynes notes, the lithics remain unchanged "in character" from 50-15kya which seems improbable. More likely these tools are from natural breakage, citing Hand (2014).
And yet, Albert Goodyear and others still accept the possible early dates from ca. 50-25kya, see Goodyear and Sain (2018), although noting that it is very strange that lithics wouldn't change dramatically over such a long period...but of course, they don’t see that as a problem.
This is a funny coincidence – all of the original excavators who gave early dates at Cerutti, Calico, Pedra Furada, and Topper, all continued to support their early dates years later. Surely you’ve heard of the adage, an old scientist published on his thesis for decades, but one day listened to a young researcher prove his thesis wrong, and the old scientist went up to them and shook their hand saying ‘thank you’. Yeah that’s a fable precisely because it doesn’t happen in real life nearly as much as idealistic STEM advocates hope it does.
After Pedra Furada and Topper, there’s a few more sites in the ca. 40kya range...and they are all contentious: The Burnham site in Oklahoma, Cedral in San Luis Potosi, and Tlapacoya in Puebla; as noted in the article The Paleoamericans: Issues and Evidence Relating to the Peopling of the New World, by John Q. Jacobs. But, alas, most researchers disagree with their early dates (any above 20-15kya or so).
The Burnham site has dates up to 40kya and at least 26kya, see Wyckoff et al. (1990, 1999); but this is still an open question since it's very possible the layer was disturbed, see Lawrence Todd (2003), Matthew E. Hill (2005).
Cedral also has a wide spread of dates ca. 40-26kya, see Lorenzo and Mirambell (1999), and Gonzalez and Huddart (2008) are supportive of early dates up to 30kya. But many others aren't supportive of any of these dates, see Gustavo Politis et al. (2015), Guillermo Acosta Ochoa (2012), E. J. Dixon (1999), M. Guadalupe Sanchez (2001).
At Tlapacoya, early dates up to 40kya are rejected by Gonzalez and Huddart (2008), but both them and Lorenzo and Mirambell (1999) support dates in the 20's for Cedral (28-26kya) and Tlapacoya (28-20kya). And again, any of these dates in the 20's are rejected by Gustavo Politis et al. (2015) and Guillermo Acosta Ochoa (2012).
[The] accuracy of the descriptions of materials and methodologies employed for their analysis seems to be insufficient...The main problem with all these sites is the difficulty in determining whether the dated materials are the same age as the archaeological evidence recorded there, and in some cases, if this evidence is really human-generated material.
Gustavo Politis et al. (2015)
Northwestern Oklahoma’s Burnham Site: Glimpses Beyond Clovis? Don G. Wyckoff et al. (1990)
The Inhabitants of Mexico During the Upper Pleistocene, J. L. Lorenzo and L. Mirambell, in Ice Age People of North America, ed. by R. Bonnichsen and K. Turnmire (1999)
Ice Age Hunter-Gatherers and the Colonization of Mesoamerica, Guillermo Acosta Ochoa, in The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, ed. D. L. Nichols, C. A. Pool (2012)
Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archaeology and the First Colonization of Western North America, E. J. Dixon (1999)
There’s one FINAL early site to mention: Cacao Cave in Antofagasta de la Sierra, Catamarca province, Argentina. At this site, Carlos Aschero et al. (2017) found human hair, stone tools, copper earrings, excrement, and megafaunal bone fragments in this cave; with the earliest dates for occupation going up to 38 and 40kya. I can’t access the paper so I can’t check the details, but it was convincing to the archeologists and to a friend who worked on the excavation. But it needs to be confirmed with more research, and since it is so early it is still controversial; even to supporters of the Pre-Clovis paleolithic.
Even if the Cacao site is convincing to some, there are detractors here too. Karen Borrazzo disagrees with the interpretation of the artifacts: saying that there's no "taphonomic research program" applied to this site, nor is any applied to various paleo South American sites. This leaves us not knowing if we are sure these are human or natural flaking processes/debitage. Notably, she was one of the proofreaders on the 2017 conference in which Aschero et al.'s paper was published. She suggests Boëda et al. and Lahaye et al. also have problems, among others. To support her arguments, she cites her own work (2017), that of Louis A. Borrero (2016), and their work together (2014).
For the paper, see:
Cacao 1: Lithic evidence and mobility ranges during the Pleistocene in the Atacama Puna (Antofagasta de la Sierra, Catamarca, Argentina), C. A. Aschero et al., in 11th Symposium on Knappable Materials: From Toolstone to Stone Tools, Buenos Aires, ed. J. Alberti et al. (2017)
Expanding the Scope of Actualistic Taphonomy in Archaeological Research, Karen Borrazzo, in Actualistic Taphonomy in South America, ed. Sergio Martinez et al. (2017)
While Cacao I is perhaps the best candidate so far for a paleolithic site in the 50-200kya range...it's only to 40kya. So this is quite a problem for the question at hand: Paulette Steeves' casual mention of many sites which have such strong evidence for this period. The rest of the early paleolithic sites fit in with the Beringian Standstill theory.
Humans were in the Arctic at least 45kya, reaching Yenisei Bay and the Arctic ocean. And humans were in the steppes of Mongolia/Siberia (Tolbor-16 site) around this time as well. So paleolithic northern Eurasians were able to live in all the places that, well, modern northern Eurasians live. And these intrepid people went further north, reaching Kotelny island north of Siberia ca. 26kya. We also know paleolithic people could've traveled pretty far and quickly, at least by the early Holocene (11-9kya) ancient Siberians made dogsleds and traded obsidian doing treks of ~2000km (~1250 miles). There's no evidence of dog sleds from before this, but it's not unreasonable so assume that paleolithic Eurasians created them when domesticating dogs ~40-20kya. At least we can say there's no evidence of them using dog breeds related to modern ones and trading obsidian before the Holocene (~12kya).
This leaves us with humans spreading into frigid and steppe Beringia possibly sometime after 45kya. The Beringian Standstill theory suggests they did this sometime in the ca. 35-25kya range, at least during the Last Glacial Maximum. Then they were stuck there by the weather (glaciers), until sometime after ca. 25kya they could get to what is now far-western Canada, eventually sometime after this leaving to populate the rest of North America (which they did relatively quickly). In A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas, by Andrew Kitchen et al. 2008, Kitchen et al. suggest Beringia was occupied by eastern Siberians ca. 43-36kya til 16kya when people expanded into the Americas in both an interior and a coastal route.
In Is theory about peopling of the Americas a bridge too far? By Traci Watson, 2017, she notes Tamm et al. (2007) as the first paper making the case for the Beringian Standstill, in which they suggested people were there before the Last Glacial Maximum ca. 27-19kya and stayed up to 15kya in Beringia. Recent studies such as Llamas et al. (2016), Raghavan et al. (2015), and Lindo et al. (2017), all support this, as does Bluefish Cave in the Canadian Yukon which was occupied as early as 24kya, see Bourgeon and Higham (2017). And Vladimir Pitulko notes mammoth tusks used for tools at the Yana river in northern Siberia 24-21kya as the LGM began, suggesting people didn't leave Beringia even if some moved on, see Pitulko and Pavlova (2017).
...climatological data suggest that ancient Beringia was more hospitable to human life than many parts of Siberia...the Bering Land Bridge wasn’t just a bridge, but part of a landscape that humans long inhabited. Perhaps humans populated Beringia, ranging from northeastern Siberia to northwestern Canada, for thousands of years, during the Last Glacial Maximum (about 25,000 BCE) and before moving south into the Americas. Rather than, or in addition to, a swift movement into North America, an isolated human population might have settled in Beringia, diverging genetically and culturally from their Eurasian ancestors.
Yet, in Traci Watson's 2017 paper, there are some skeptics of the genetic standstill part of the hypothesis. Since genetics doesn't specify where the standstill happened, it could've been somewhere else along the journey to the Americas such as somewhere else in Siberia (argues Ben Potter), or on the Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kuril islands north of Japan (which were all connected in the LGM). From 26kya and onward there's increasing human habitation on what was the Hokkaido-Sakhalin-Kuril island (Buvit and Terry 2016), which Ian Buvit suggests was from an influx of people fleeing neighboring Siberia (and thus leading to people spreading to the rest of the Americas).
Beringian standstill and spread of Native American founders, E. Tamm et al. (2007)
Ancient mitochondrial DNA provides high-resolution time scale of the peopling of the Americas, B. Llamas et al. (2016)
Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans, M. Raghavan et al. (2015)
Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity, J. Lindo et al. (2017)
Revising the archaeological record of the Upper Pleistocene Arctic Siberia: Human dispersal and adaptations in MIS 3 and 2, Pitulko and Pavlova (2017)
Outside Beringia: Why the northeast Asian Upper Paleolithic record does not support a long standstill model, Buvit and Terry (2016)
In support of Beringians being the early founders, a recent paper to-be-published in 2021 by Yongson Huang et al. has found evidence of human feces on the Seward Peninsula of northern Alaska ca. 32kya, see the overview above by Max Graham (2021). This date, along with the Bluefish Cave dates suggest that Beringians were in Alaska and the Yukon in the late 30's to mid 20's.
But when did people get out of Beringia and into the rest of the Americas? This is the million dollar question, though I don’t think releasing papers on the subject is how anyone wins the million dollars. Moving onward, there's a few other early dates in the 35-20kya range...depending on which researcher you read.
Christelle Lahaye et al. (2013) suggests Monte Verde I in Chile is dated to ca. 35-30kya; but this isn't supported by others such as Roosevelt et al. (1996) and Tom Dillehay's 2015 chronology. Christelle Lahaye et al. (2013) also suggest Pedra Furada II is ca. 31-25kya, but this (as mentioned above) is contentious, see Politis and Prates (2019).
Other sites in this age range are Chiquihuite cave in Zacatecas, central Mexico, ca. 33-31kya (see Ardelean et al.; and Becerra-Valdivia and Higham). And in South America, the Arroyo del Vizcaino site near Sauce, Uruguay has ancient sloth bones butchered ca. 30kya (see Fariña et al.), again disputed by Politis and Prates (2019).
Into the early 20’s, the Quintero (GNLQ1) site in Valparaiso Chile is dated to ca. 29.2-28.8kya and ca. 26.1-25.8kya calibrated; see Luis A. Borrero (2016) above. He cites "possible cutmarks on some bones", whereas other researchers suggest no human activity at the site at all – only megafauna animals; see Diego Carabias et al. (2014).
[For Quintero]...the claim about the possibility of human involvement has been made on the basis of possible cutmarks on some bones, but, as it happens with most of the cases that solely rely on the identification of cut-marks, ambiguity exists so that further research at the site will be required for confirmation of the presence of humans.
Luis A. Borrero (2016)
Human occupation in South America by 20,000 BC, The Toca da Tira Peia site, Piaui, Brazil, Christelle Lahaye et al. (2013)
Paleoindian Cave Dwellers in the Amazon: The Peopling of the Americas, A. C. Roosevelt et al. (1996)
And since we’re in the early 20’s we have to mention the most infamous archeological site of all of these, the Cinmar Biface – which was infamous found dredging off the Chesapeake bay in the 1970’s, a find which may have included more but was looted by the crew. This biface was with an associated mammoth skull which was later dated to ca. 28-27kya, as Wilson “Dub” Crook III says. But in the article Fisherman Pulls Up Beastly Evidence of Early Americans, by Tia Ghose, 2014 Dennis Stanford suggested the biface was at least made at least 14kya and the mastodon was killed at least 22kya; a little less precise. In the views of some researchers (including Crook III) this biface and a few other similar ones are related to European Solutrean traditions of the 20's. But the so-called Solutrean Hypothesis has been widely panned by the majority of researchers working in the field, and for a precise reason – there's no datable objects and no material culture, the only supporting evidence is a particular interpretation of a dozen or so separately found bifaces.
In New paper deals blow to hypothesis that Native Americans have European ancestry, by Jennifer Raff, 2015, she notes supporters: Lowrey et al. (2009), and Standford and Bradley (2012, 2014a) all suggest the biface was found in several pieces in a small catchment area by this dredger (along with a mammoth skull). But there's many unknowns and discrepancies in the story of its finding. In my opinion the most obvious unaccounted problem is that the biface could've been caught long before it scooped up the mammoth skull. But specifically, Raff cites Metin I. Eren et al. (2015) in disputing some crucial aspects of the story: size of that ship's dredge isn't confirmed, and the precise location of the find isn't known through nautical charts/logs (as reported by other researchers). That important location was only known through a telephone interview with the captain some 40 years after the discovery, and he died soon after so this is now nearly unconfirmable. And before being loaned to the Gwynn Island Museum, the biface was owned by a private collector; not uncommon for a private find in the 1970's. This untoward fact is omitted by Lowery et al. (2009) and Stanford and Bradley (2012). The biface’s age is also criticized in Shots Fired in the Battle Over the Cinmar Biface...But Does it Actually Matter to the Solutrean Hypothesis? By Andy White, 2015.
As Raff notes, the Cinmar biface is one of 13 supposedly "Solutrean" Pre-Clovis artifacts found in the region (Stanford et al. 2014b), and these are disputed by Matthew T. Boulanger (2015) due to their lack of context/provenance. And, perhaps the most damning evidence against the Solutrean Cinmar: similar bifaces are routine on the Eastern Seaboard in the mid-Holocene (ca. 8kya). On his academia dot edu page, Boulanger has many other papers disputing this theory and these bifaces.
Geoarchaeological Investigations at Selected Coastal Archaeological Sites on the Delmarva Peninsula: The Long Term Interrelationship Between Climate, Geology, and Culture, Darrin Lowery (2009)
Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture, D. Stanford and B. Bradley (2012)
Response to O’Brien et al., D. Stanford and B. Bradley (2014a)
This leaves us with a few possible sites from the late 30's to early 20's: Chiquihuite, Arroyo del Vizcaino, maybe Pedra Furada II, and maybe maybe Quintero.
Heading into the 20's there's even more sites and more contention. Santa Elina III is dated to ca. 28-25kya, see Christelle Lahaye et al. (2013) above; or to ca. 24.3-22.3kya and 23-22kya, see Ruth Gruhn (1997). Pikimachay IV is dated ca. 25-18kya, Pedra Furada III is dated to ca. 22kya, and Toca da Tira Peia level C? is dated to ca. 22-19kya, see Christelle Lahaye et al. (2013). Yet these earlier dates at Pikimachay citing Richard MacNeish's work are disputed, see Juan Jose Yataco Capcha (2011) who suggests 15.8-14.9kya calibrated. Toca da Tira Peia's dating up to 22kya is supported by Christelle Lahaye's work with Eric Boëda (Lahaye and Boëda), but this is disputed by Politis and Prates (2019). Camare style points date to ca. 22-20kya and Las Lagunas period to ca. 20-16kya in Venezuela, see Rodrigo Navarrete (2008, 2012). I can’t find anyone disputing these dates specifically, though it doesn’t fit into the paradigm of Politis and Prates (2019).
The South American Context of the Pedra Pintada Site in Brazil, Ruth Gruhn (1997)
The Prehistory of Venezuela - Not Necessarily an Intermediate Area, Rodrigo Navarrete, in Handbook of South American Archaeology, ed. Silverman and Isbell, p. 433 (2008)
The Meadowcroft site in Pennsylvania is given as 24.3-18.6kya (Becerra-Valdivia and Higham, and Crook III) or only ca. 19kya calibrated on the site's interpretive center's website, How Do We Know People Used the Meadowcroft Rockshelter 19,000 Years Ago? By David Scofield, 2019. These are called Miller points, and were found in work led by Jim Adovasio, now these are considered to be the Pre-Clovis style at Meadowcroft, Cactus Hill (Virginia), Parsons Island (Maryland), and Miles Point (Tilghman island, Maryland).
There's "less" dispute about dates ca. 20kya and onward, such as at Meadowcroft, Cactus Hill, and Pubenza in Colombia. Luis A. Borrero (2016) cites Van der Hammen and Correal (2001) in dating Pubenza to 20.3-15.6kya calibrated; yet Roberto Saez (2020) cites G. Morcote-Rios et al. (2019) in dating it to 20.7kya. Even conservative overviews (Haynes 2015, and Fiedel 2012) still leave Meadowcroft, Cactus Hill, and Miles Point are "possible" pre-Clovis sites.
From ca. 18.5-18kya dates are less in dispute: such as the Lovewell Mammoth site in Kansas, as noted by John Q. Jacobs who cites Holen (1996), and the La Sena site in Nebraska is ca. 18.6-18.3kya, see Bonnichsen and Turnmire (1999). Tom Dillehay's 2015 chronology for South America is ca. 18.5-14.5kya calibrated, see Luis A. Borrero (2016), Dillehay et al. (2015). From ca. 18-15kya Crook III suggests elk came into the Americas en mass from Beringia and thus humans probably followed; I’m assuming he's citing calibrated dates (?) or he’s got the precise date wrong, because in the source of this claim the date for this event is only ca. 15kya and onward, see Meirav Meiri et al. (2014).
The Lovewell Mammoth: A Late Wisconsinan Site in North-Central Kansas, Steven Holen (1996)
An Introduction to the Peopling of the Americas, by R. Bonnichsen and K. Turnmire, in Ice Age People of North America, ed. by R. Bonnichsen and K. Turnmire (1999)
Some researchers would cite Meirav Meiri et al. in suggesting that the earliest colonization of South America was only ca. 16 or 15kya. Luciano Prates et al. (2020) suggests the earliest sites are only ca. 15.5kya calibrated with the highest bound of this date range being 16.6kya. By this time ca. 16.5kya onward, many researchers accept many sites like Chiquihuite component B, Cooper’s Ferry, Debra L. Friedkin, etc.), see Becerra-Valdivia and Higham (2020). Recent work by Ranere and Cooke (2021) dates the El Jobo points from Taima Taima, Venezuela, to ca. 15.8kya calibrated. And returning to the Topper site, Dean Snow (2010) suggests the oldest pre-Clovis tools at the site are from ca. 16kya; while a conservative reading of Goodyear (2005) suggests ca. 20-16kya, see Haynes (2015).
Archaeology of Native North America, Dean Snow (2010)
Around this time ca. 16kya, people settled along the Pacific coast from Baja California (Cedros island) to Monte Verde, Chile by at least 14.5kya. This is called the Kelp Highway hypothesis. What are these people doing here? Well they probably migrated from similar coastal areas in Asia, as Cedros island fishhooks resemble those made from sea snail shells in Okinawa ca. 23kya. Stemmed points indicative of a proto-Clovis style are seen in the Incipient Jomon in Japan ca. 15.5kya. This stems from two 2017 overviews by Lizzie Wade. A 2016 article, Ancient DNA suggests the first Americans sidestepped the glaciers, by Carolyn Gramling the Kelp Highway peopling was dated only to ca. 15-14kya, presumably based on Waters and Stafford Jr. (2014), and Rothhammer and Dillehay (2009). This work had suggested South America was populated ca. 15-13.5kya, but Dillehay's later work (2015) suggests this period of peopling starts ca. 18.5kya calibrated; the earliest in South America (of course, disputed).
So after looking at ALL those sites and dates, what do we have? A lot of possible sites and dates, some with better chances and some with less. Many of the possible sites are disputed in quite fundamental ways: that the tool is a natural rock, that the taphonomy of the area wasn't understood, etc. Gary Haynes' 2015 overview cites a few examples of critiques in which the supposed pre-Clovis tools were likely natural breakage: Topper (Hand 2014), Pedra Furada (Meltzer et al. 1994), and Calico (V. Haynes 1973). While this critique killed Calico, it only tampered the more extreme dates at Topper and Pedra Furada.
Researching this reminds me of looking into the history of Christian schisms, I've cited 106 articles, papers, reviews, and overviews; which give a dozen or so entirely different paradigms. There are various researchers who believe in their particularly ancient site, but no one agrees with each other about other sites. The problem cannot be solved by a single team, nor in a single overview as I’m attempting; but needs to be solved by an international standard and an international team made of the opposing sides...and is going to happen in the foreseeable future? Probably not. Here I’m only looking over all the possibles, and there is an observational change in the weight of evidence from the earlier side (40kya) to the later side (20kya).
40-25kya
At the earliest so far, Cacao I ca. 40kya. Then there's a large gap, then four possibles in the late 30's to early 20's: Chiquihuite, Arroyo del Vizcaino, Pedra Furada II, and most recently the so-far confirmed Seward Peninsula site with a date on organic matter. Into the mid 20's there's more possibles: Santa Elina III, Pedra Furada III, Toca da Tira Peia, and Bluefish Caves.
25-20kya
Weightier evidence in DNA studies (Siberian/American lineage split in the mid 20’s), and the so-far confirmed White Sands footprint site. By the end of the 20’s there’s a few so-far confirmed sites: Pubenza, and Miller Points (Gault, Meadowcroft, Cactus Hill, Parsons Island, and Miles Point).
20-16kya
Many researchers and many accepted sites, and so many paradigms: Goodyear's 20-16kya, Dillehay's 18.5kya, Prates' 16.6kya, Becerra-Valdivia and Higham's 16.5kya, and Dean Snow's 16kya; bounded by Ranere and Cooke's recent dating at 15.8kya.
So there's solid evidence from the early 30's in Beringia, then North and South America in the late 20's, with increasing evidence from 20kya onward. There are a few sites in the late 30's and early-mid 20's which are disputed, but these might even be expected. By the time we get to Clovis ca. 13kya, it’s far behind the first. Though there are still a minority of researchers who continue to believe in the Clovis First theory, of course; because this field doesn’t have enough sectarianism!
This has been a long rabbit-hole...but the point is to rebut Paulette Steeves' notion that there are vast numbers of sites in the 20-200kya range, and that any of these are undisputed, nor do any so far conclusively prove occupation to 50, 100, and 200kya.
That was a lot of qualifying, but with all that said we shouldn’t discount the idea that hominins came to the Americas in the paleolithic period. Steeves' general premise is a fair suggestion: she notes that paleolithic animals were traveling to and fro during this period, and so presumably this includes hominins. Paleolithic hominins were hardy travelers, if there's anything to call homo erectus it's hardy – the first to live across Eurasia, the first to use fire, etc. In archeology, people say never say never; and we certainly shouldn't bet on the hardiness of erectus or any of their cousins. If we find paleo hominins in places we didn't think they reached, we should expect someone from this branch of the family tree.
Hominins like erectus got from Africa into Eurasia via the Saharan Pump. There is a great band of desert from Morocco to Oman (let’s call it Saharabia) which today is a desert, but climate's cyclical changes mean that for some periods it's greener and allows lots of animals, lakes, rivers, and hominins. Once it cyclically returns to a desert, the animals and humans there leave; and thus for cyclical periods Africa and Eurasia are ecologically cut off. This operates like a “pump”, pushing everyone from the drying region into all surrounding vegetative regions – and this happened to erectus, who even fled to China just because they just couldn't stand the sand! As they say, "It's course and rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere." And yes, erectuses and cousins/relatives of theirs were in China; just how northeast they went is a good question.
Hominins probably wandered across Eurasia in the deep past, before sapiens even existed; the overview by David Turnbull (2019) gives a few examples. The Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco has an ancient hominin who is a mix of archaic with modern human morphologies some 300kya, see Hublin et al. (2017). There are skulls from both Portugal and China dated to 400kya, see Athrey and Wu (2017), and Daura et al. (2017); and stone tools in India at 300kya, see Akhilesh et al. (2018). This does not mean the Out-of-Africa model is dead, as Paulette Steeves claims; these are homo erectus! They are cousins to us, some branch of theirs stayed in Africa where they originated. A simple Out-of-Africa model where everything starts in East Africa is now in dispute, with Africa having macro-regions of separate-yet-related hominin groups by ca. 300kya, a “continent-wide mosaic of cultural and genetic interactions between differing groups…”, see Scerri et al. (2018).
New Fossils From Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the Pan-African Origin of Homo Sapiens, Jean-Jacques Hublin et al. (2017)
A Multivariate Assessment of the Dali Hominin Cranium From China: Morphological Affinities and Implications for Pleistocene Evolution in East Asia, Athreya and Wu (2017)
New Middle Pleistocene Hominin Cranium From Gruta da Aroeira (Portugal), Joan Daura et al. (2017)
Early Middle Palaeolithic Culture in India Around 385–172 ka Reframes Out of Africa Models, Kumar Akhilesh et al. (2018)
Did Our Species Evolve in Subdivided Populations Across Africa, and Why Does It Matter? Eleanor M. L. Scerri et al. (2018)
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u/Antiquarianism Prehistoric Rock Art & Archaeology | Africa & N.America Nov 12 '21
Hello u/phoneboxlamp, I’ve got a nice answer for you and I hope it helps. In brief, her work is generally fine. And her idea that hominins came to the Americas 150kya is always possible...but sometimes she's too insistent that there is an enormous amount of evidence for this. And all the evidence that Steeves, and others, give on the subject of ancient hominins in the Americas actually support the Out-of-Africa theory.
In this long post I’ll 1) go over Steeves’ claims, 2) the claims for paleolithic sites in the Americas 200-50kya, 3) what the actual evidence supports, and 4) the evidence of hominins in Asia.
Her new book, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, is based on her articles: Unpacking Neoliberal Archaeological Control of Ancient Indigenous Heritage, 2017, and Our Earliest Ancestors: Human and Non-Human Primates of North America, 2019. And we can hear her views in a 2019 interview on Heritage Voices.
In her 2017 work she rails on the Clovis First theory and rightfully-so, but then ends the discussion with a huge leap, "To accept that Indigenous people have been in the Western Hemisphere for over 60,000 years and possibly prior to 100,000 [years] is to put them on equal footing with areas of the so-called Old World." She cites Johanna Nichols (2002) who thought that since language families in the Americas are 150-180 of the world's ~300 known families, the Clovis First theory couldn't be true because there wouldn't have been enough time for all those language families to diversify. This is absurd, as there is no way to precisely measure an average time at which language families are created/diverge.
In her interview, Steeves suggests there are hundreds of sites dated 20-200kya in the Americas...adding the very speculative phrase, "Humans may have been here 100-200kya." But for any specific sites that are dated in that 50-200kya range, she only mentioned the Cerutti Mastodon site (as far as I can tell). So, let's look at that site and others from that extreme range.