Heather Pringle of "Hakai Magazine" (based in Victoria, Canada and focusing on "Coastal Science and Societies") published an article on March 7th titled, From Villified to Vindicated: the Story of Jacques Cinq-Mars. The piece is as shocking as its title promises. That is, if you're interested in an unfairly-scorned scientist, the earliest known evidence for humans in the Americas, and the long-term, pigheaded close-mindedness of the archaeological field which, as Pringle puts it, "hobbled science for decades."

If not, you and I are very different people.

The story goes like this:

Between 1977 and 1987, Jacques Cinq-Mars and his team excavated a few caverns known as the Bluefish Caves (link also cited in Pringle's article).

His findings were extraordinary. They went against the hypothesis most widely-accepted by relevant science at the time: the Clovis-First theory. This essentially stated that humans first migrated to the Americas via the Bering Strait around 13,000 years ago, when ice sheets were melting. They and their descendants then traveled south and made a living on the American continent. The name "Clovis" is derived from a spear point type found in Clovis, NM, which characterizes these people.

However, evidence Cinq-Mars and his team unearthed at the Bluefish Caves pointed to quite a different story:

...the bones of extinct horses and wooly mammoths bearing what seemed to be marks from human butchering and toolmaking. Radiocarbon test results dated the oldest finds to around 24,000 years before the present. (Pringle)

Evidence from Bluefish Caves was not alone in indicating an earlier peopling of the Americas. Pringle mentions the Meadocrowft Rock Shelter, PA, and Monte Verde at the very southern end of Chile, two sites which also seem to indicate that Asian hunter-gatherers migrated to the Americas much earlier than 13,000 years ago. However, although all three sites were excavated around the same time, Monte Verde, in particular, received much more attention than Bluefish Caves. Compare Monte Verde's Wikipedia Page to that of Bluefish Caves, and I think the stark difference you'll find in the volume of information offered by both pages speaks for itself.

As a current undergraduate student in archaeology, I can tell you that in a class I took my freshman year, "Great Discoveries in Archaeology" at UConn, Monte Verde, Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, and Paisley Caves (OR) were mentioned as providing evidence that contradicted the Clovis-First theory. However, I'd only heard of Bluefish Caves in passing until March 7th, 2017.

Why could this be? My first thought was that it may come down to "bad science" such as untrustworthy radiocarbon dating, despite the fact that Cinq-Mars stood by his findings. As it turns out, he was right to do so: a new study done by Ph.D. student, Lauriane Bourgeon, indicates that not only was the dating trustworthy, but so was the analysis of the cutmarks on the jaw of a Yukon Horse:

The bone surface is a bit weathered and altered by root etching but the cut marks are well preserved; they are located on the medial side, under the third and second molars, and are associated with the removal of the tongue using a stone tool. (Bourgeon)

This, to me, is the nail in the coffin. I cautiously accept the fact that 24,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers descended from a Beringian people feasted on horse tongue in what is now the border of Alaska and Yukon.

But a new, important question is raised: If the science is good, and always was, and if there was evidence to support Cinq-Mars' findings, why did Bluefish Caves go unmentioned in my freshman course?

The answer, to me, seems to lie problems in the archaeological field, in general. Pringle brings up some pretty disgusting examples of blatant disrespect for Cinq-Mars and his findings, along with examples of polite (but what seems to be relatively unfounded) critique, all from his own colleagues.

This, of course, is not unusual. Throughout history, those who have questioned previously-held notions have been vilified. And rather than dying for what he believes in like Galileo did, Cinq-Mars is finally gaining the attention he deserves. However, while reading stories of fellow archaeologists audibly snickering during Cinq-Mars' presentations on Bluefish Caves, I couldn't help but think of a phrase a current professor of mine is fond of using:

"Archaeologists are stupid."