Although Fuyan also shows H.Sapiens may (its datation is also disputed) also have reached out of africa much earlier than otherwise supported.
The problem is clearly in preconceptions about H. migration, and beliefs about the capabilities of our ancestors long ago.
People constructed boats and settled Crete 200,000 years ago. Like it or not. Were they H. sap., in Europe already? Maybe!
As a side note, I've seen people strike through stuff out on HN, and I'd like to strike through this claim to emphasize there's a correction; it's not in the undocumented features repo[1], and I've tried a few standard things like ~this~ and ~~this~~ and -this- and --this-- and have never figured it out. Can anyone tell me what the markdown is?
Beautiful, thank you.
Both 'we should be trying to prove ourselves wrong' and 'Being so far out of line with other evidence means that the evidence in favor of hominids needs to be exceptionally rock solid' can both be valid at the same time. The base rate of a 'false positive' for extraordinary claims that conflict with an existing body of evidence is typically much higher so confidence in the evidence would need to quite strong for that piece of evidence to move the consensus.
I'd consider myself largely a frequentist but the relevant xkcd [1] comes to mind
I'd argue that ignoring that aspect can amplify one's susceptiblity to confirmation bias if one is predisposed to believing in a very early American hominid story for whatever reason.
[1] https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/frequentists_vs_bayesians_2x.pn...
The Cerutti Mastodon site is not compelling to me, because a date of 130kya would put it before any other site of homo sapiens outside of Africa. Being so far out of line with other evidence means that the evidence in favor of hominids needs to be exceptionally rock solid, which it isn't.