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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama intends to nominate two lawyers with government experience to become commissioners on the Federal Election Commission, the agency that oversees and enforces campaign finance laws. One of the nominees would fill a Democratic vacancy on the commission and the other would replace the Republican vice chairman, the White House said.
Obama's nominee to replace Republican Donald F. McGahn is Lee Goodman, who served as a top aide to former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia. Obama's Democratic nominee is Ann Ravel, the chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. She would fill the seat vacated earlier this year by Cynthia Bauerly.
If confirmed by the Senate, the FEC would have all of its six commissioners — three Democrats and three Republicans.
The even partisan split on the FEC has at times contributed to gridlock on the commission with votes breaking along party lines.
Advocates of tighter campaign finance laws applauded Ravel's nomination Friday. While she was chair, the California Fair Political Practices Commission last year sued an Arizona non-profit group for failing to divulge the source of money it used to fight a tax initiative proposed by California Gov. Jerry Brown. Under orders from the state Supreme Court, the group ultimately revealed that two conservative groups were behind its $11 million campaign.
"Ann Ravel has led an effort in California to shed light on secret money in California elections and has demonstrated a commitment to effective enforcement of campaign finance disclosure laws," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group that advocates changes in campaign finance law.
Goodman himself played a significant role in a case that was closely watched by campaign finance observers. He defended a donor to Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of reimbursing donors with money from his corporation, a violation of the law. Goodman argued that a ban on corporate donations was unconstitutional. Goodman won at the lower court level, but a federal appeals court upheld the corporate contribution ban and the Supreme Court declined to review that decision, leaving the ban in place.
At issue was the Supreme Court decision in the campaign finance case known as Citizens United, which permitted unlimited corporate and union money to be used in politics, but not in direct donations to parties or candidates.
"Citizens United was a sea change in First Amendment jurisprudence and renders the absolute ban on limited corporate contributions unconstitutional," Goodman said when he won the lower court decision in 2011.
Goodman's stance in that case is likely to please supporters of a less restrictive campaign finance system and, likewise, draw scrutiny from critics of the Citizens United decision.
Advocates of tighter campaign laws have long criticized McGahn, arguing that he has led FEC's Republican bloc to thwart enforcement of campaign laws. McGahn has argued that he has tried to prevent the FEC from becoming an activist agency in its interpretation of the law.
In a statement Friday, he said: "Finally, President Obama has submitted FEC nominees to the Senate for consideration. As many well know, I have long desired to leave, but committed to stay to prevent the FEC from further trampling on our First Amendment and due process rights. I am pleased that a willing and capable successor has been vetted and nominated, and look forward to returning to practice law in the future."


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We just got back to Jersey after attending NBC Universal's party for the press. The soiree Tuesday night, held on the 52nd floor of 30 Rock in Manhattan, was officially off-the-record. But we can certainly tell you who we saw there.
As we were checking our coat, Kathie Lee Gifford was putting on her's and leaving. Her NBC morning-TV partner, Hoda Kotb, was still inside at the shindig.
The event, sponsored by NBCU chief Jeff Zucker and his communications team, came on the heels of news that the nation's largest cable operator, Comcast, was buying the home of the Peacock Network along with its stable of cable channels, which includes USA Network, SyFy, Bravo, Oxygen, CNBC and MSNBC. The seller is General Electric.
A shirt-sleeved Zucker briefly addressed the gathered media, and made some funny jokes about the coming merger (we can't say what, it was off the record, remember?)
There were both NBCU talent and suits at the holiday party. NBC News anchor Brian Williams, a Jersey guy, stopped by, as did Lester Holt, Ann Curry and Amy Robach from "The Today Show." Jimmy Fallon popped by when the party was ending.
As for execs, in addition to Zucker there was NBC Cable Entertainment chief Bonnie Hammer, Bravo honcho Frances Berwick, NBCU's women's and lifestyle chieftain Lauren Zalaznick, CNBC president Mark Hoffman and "Saturday Night Live" creator and producer Lorne Michaels.
We have written about Bravo's "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" for NewJerseyNewsroom.com, and NBC has big home shopping connections and affiliations.
First of all, GE/NBC currently owns about 32.5 percent of ShopNBC on a fully diluted basis of 37.6 million shares. NBC's 6.4 million shares represent 16.8 percent ownership and GE's 6 million common stock purchase warrants represent 15.7 percent.
Secondly, the stars of several of NBCU's cable show have home shopping lines, including: Tori Spelling, who is in Oxygen's "Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood," on HSN; Rachel Zoe, from Bravo's "The Rachel Zoe Report," on QVC; Isaac Mizrahi, who hosts Bravo's "The Fashion Show," on QVC; Padma Lakshmi, from Bravo's "Top Chef," on HSN; and Ramona Singer from Bravo's "The Real Housewives of New York City." on HSN.
The party gift was a DVD of the third season of NBC's "30 Rock," appropriately.

subset: commoncrawl


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Title I
Requires the development of science standards by the 2005-06 school year.
Maintains 1994 ESEA requirement for assessments in reading and math at three grade spans (3-5, 6-9, 10-12) through the 2004-2005 school year. Requires annual assessments in reading and math for grades 3-8 beginning in 2005-2006, with the addition of science assessments in 2007-2008 (but only in same three grade spans as the 1994 law). Implementation of new assessments may be deferred if Congress does not appropriate specified levels of funding for assessment development and administration, ranging from $370 million for fiscal year 2002 to $400 million in fiscal year 2005. Subpart 1 of Part A of Title VI authorizes $490 million in fiscal year 2002 for formula-based State assessment grants and a related Grants for Enhanced Assessment Instruments program.
Requires reading assessments using tests written in English for any student who has attended school in the US (excluding Puerto Rico) for 3 or more consecutive years, with LEA discretion to use tests in another language for up to 2 additional years. States also must annually assess English proficiency for all LEP students beginning with the 2002-03 school year.
Requires, beginning in school year 2002-03, biennial State participation in NAEP reading and math assessments for 4th and 8th graders so long as the Department pays the costs of administering those assessments.
Incorporates new language intended to ensure that Title I funds are used only for effective educational practices. The authorization for both schoolwide and targeted assistance programs call for those programs to use effective methods and instructional strategies that are based on scientifically based research. Other provisions call for school improvement plans, professional development, and the technical assistance provided by LEAs to low-performing schools all to be based on scientifically based research.
Requires a single, statewide accountability system for all LEAs and public schools, except that LEAs and schools not receiving Title I funds are not subject to the school improvement provisions of 1116(c).
Tightens the definition of adequate yearly progress (AYP) to include annual statewide measurable objectives for improved achievement by all students as well as specific groups, including economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, and LEP students. The overall goal is for all students to meet the "proficient" level no later than 12 years after the 2001-02 school year. AYP is to be based primarily on State assessments; one additional academic indicator is required and other indicators are permitted, but they may not be used to reduce the number or change the identity of schools otherwise subject to improvement under Sec. 1116. Each student group must meet the statewide achievement goal for a school to make AYP. If a group does not meet the State goal, the school can be considered to have made AYP if the percentage of students in that group not reaching the proficient level falls by at least 10 percent. At least 95 percent of each group must participate in State assessments. States may average up to three years of data in making AYP determinations.
Requires State and LEA report cards to the public no later than the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year. Also requires annual State reports to the Secretary, to be transmitted in summary form to the Congress, beginning in 2002-03.
Requires the Secretary to withhold of 25 percent of funds for State administration from States that have failed to meet the 1994 deadlines for putting in place standards and a system for measuring AYP, and permits the Secretary to withhold an unspecified amount of State administrative funds from a State that fails to meet requirements of new law.
Adds "Parents Right to Know" provision requiring LEAs to annually notify parents of their right to request information on the professional qualifications of their child's teachers.
Requires States to reserve 2 percent of Part A allocations for school improvement purposes in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, rising to 4 percent in 2004 and thereafter. (The 1994 law permitted, but did not require, the reservation of .5 percent of allocations for this purpose.) States must distribute 95 percent of these funds to LEAs for schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring.
Establishes a separate $500 million authorization for a new Assistance for Local School Improvement grant program under which States would make subgrants ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 to help LEAs comply with the improvement provisions of Sec. 1116.
Requires schools identified for improvement to develop two-year improvement plans incorporating strategies from scientifically based research on how to strengthen the core academic subjects and address the specific issues that caused the school to be identified for improvement.
Requires schools identified for improvement to reserve annually at least 10 percent of their Part A funds for professional development that directly addresses the problems that led to identification for improvement.
Requires LEAs to immediately provide students attending schools identified for improvement the option of attending another public school, which may include a public charter school, that is not identified for improvement. LEAs must provide or pay for transportation to the new school, with a limit on the portion of Part A funds that may be used for this purpose (see 20 percent cap below).
Permits students attending schools in the second year of school improvement (failure to make AYP for 3 consecutive years) to use Title I funds to obtain supplemental educational services from the public- or private-sector provider of their choice. Caps the per-child cost of such services at the lesser of the LEA per-child Part A allocation or the cost of services.
Requires LEAs to "promptly" notify parents of eligible students attending schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring of their option to transfer their child to a better public school or to obtain supplemental services.
Requires LEAs to give priority to low-achieving students from low-income families in making available choice and supplemental educational services. Only low-income children are eligible for supplemental services.
Requires LEAs to use an amount equal to 20 percent of their Part A Allocations to pay for transportation of students exercising a choice option or obtaining supplemental educational services for eligible students. In reserving such funds, LEAs may not reduce allocations to schools identified for corrective action or restructuring by more than 15 percent.
Permits a student who transferred to another school under these provisions to remain in that school through its highest grade, but the LEA is required to provide transportation to the new school only as long as the student's original school is subject to school improvement, corrective action, or restructuring.
Strengthens corrective action (required after 2 years in school improvement) to include actions more likely to bring about meaningful change at the school, such as replacing school staff responsible for the continued failure to make AYP, comprehensive implementation of a new curriculum (including professional development), and reorganizing the school internally. Corrective action schools also must continue to provide choice and supplemental services options to their students.
Adds a new restructuring requirement for schools that fail to respond to corrective actions. If a school fails to make AYP after one year of corrective action, it must begin planning for restructuring, which involves fundamental change such as reopening the school as a public charter school, replacing all or most of the school's staff, or turning operation of the school over to a private management company with a demonstrated record of effectiveness, and implement its restructuring plan the following year. Schools identified for restructuring also must continue to provide choice and supplemental services options to their students.
Permits LEAs to end school improvement, corrective action, or restructuring if the school involved makes AYP for 2 consecutive years. An LEA may delay implementation of supplemental services requirements, corrective action, or restructuring if a school identified for such measures makes AYP for 1 year.
Authorizes State Academic Achievement Awards to schools that close achievement gaps or exceed AYP requirements, the designation of schools that make the greatest gains as Distinguished Schools, and financial awards to teachers in schools that receive Academic Achievement Awards. States may reserve up to 5 percent of annual Part A increases for Academic Achievement Awards, and 75 percent of these funds must be awarded to high-poverty schools.
Requires LEAs identified for improvement to spend at least 10 percent of their annual Part A allocations on professional development.
Requires LEAs to ensure that all Title I teachers hired after the first day of the first school year following the date of enactment are "highly qualified," which for new teachers means certified by the State (including alternative routes to State certification), holding at least a bachelor's degree, and passing a rigorous State test on subject knowledge and teaching skills (definition is in Title IX General Provisions).
Requires States to develop plans with annual measurable objectives that will ensure that all teachers teaching in core academic subjects are highly qualified by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. States and LEAs must report annually, beginning with the 2002-03 school year, on progress toward this goal.
Requires LEAs to use between 5 and 10 percent, inclusive, of their Part A allocations for fiscal years 2002 and 2003, and at least 5 percent thereafter, to ensure that all teachers are highly qualified by the end of the 2005-06 school year.
Strengthens paraprofessional requirements to include two years of postsecondary education or, for an applicant with a high school diploma, the demonstration of necessary skills on a "formal State or local academic assessment." All new hires must meet these requirements, and existing paraprofessionals have 4 years to comply with them.
Specifies permitted paraprofessional duties and emphasizes that paraprofessionals "may not provide any instructional services" except under the direct supervision of a teacher.
Requires principals to "attest annually in writing" that their schools are in compliance with the teacher and paraprofessional qualification requirements in section 1119.
Requires equitable inclusion of private school parents and teachers in parent involvement and professional development activities under sections 1118 and 1119, respectively.
Expands consultation requirements to cover who will provide the services, including a "thorough consideration and analysis" of the potential use of third-party providers and a written explanation if an LEA decides not to honor a private school's request that services be provided by a third-party provider. Also requires consultation to include meetings of agency and private school officials, which must continue throughout implementation and assessment of services.
Requires LEAs to document the required consultation, including affirmation by private school officials that consultation occurred, and to forward such documentation to the SEA. Also outlines complaint procedures if private school officials are dissatisfied with the outcome of the consultation.
Specifies methods for determining the number of poor children in private schools and permits such determinations to be made biennially.
Continues to permit States to reserve 1 percent of allocations under parts A, C, and D for State administrative activities, but caps the reservation at the amount a State would reserve if the total appropriation for those parts was $14 billion.
Lowers the poverty threshold for schoolwide programs to 40 percent.
Requiring annual assessments to cover all children in grades 3-8.
Tightening AYP requirements by specifying a minimally acceptable rate of progress to ensure that all groups of students-disaggregated by poverty, race and ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency-reach proficiency within 12 years.
Requiring State and local report cards on progress in helping all students meet challenging State academic standards.
Substantially increasing funding for State and local support for school improvement (from ?? percent of Part A allocations under the 1994 ESEA reauthorization to 2 percent under the NCLB Act, rising to 4 percent in 2004).
Requiring LEAs to offer students in schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring the option of attending a better public school, so that no student is trapped in an underperforming school.
Requiring LEAs to allow students attending chronically underperforming schools (i.e., failing to make AYP for 3 or more years) to use Title I funds to obtain supplemental educational services that can help keep them on track to meet challenging State academic standards.
Mandating the fundamental restructuring of any school that fails to improve over an extended period of time, including reopening the school as a charter school or turning over school operations either to the State or to a private company with a demonstrated record of effectiveness.
Rewarding schools and teachers that succeed in narrowing achievement gaps or exceeding AYP requirements through Academic Achievement Awards.
Updates of census poverty estimates are required every year rather than every two years, though only if technically feasible.
The poverty rate-linked "hold-harmless" of 85%-95% was extended to Concentration Grants.
LEAs that lose eligibility for Concentration Grants would nevertheless continue to receive them for up to 4 consecutive years.
The small-State minimum for Basic and Concentration Grants rises to .25 percent of total allocations to States for fiscal year 2001 plus .35 percent of amounts over the fiscal year 2001 level. The small-State minimum for Targeted Grants and Education Finance Incentive Grants (neither of which was funded prior to fiscal year 2002) is .35 percent.
None. Evaluations are funded through a separate authorization under Part E of Title I.
States may reserve up to 1 percent of allocations under parts A, C, and D "to carry out administrative duties" related to those parts.
States also must reserve 2 percent of Part A allocations, rising to 4 percent in fiscal year 2004, to carry out State and local school improvement activities. States must allocate 95 percent of school improvement funds directly to LEAs.
States must withhold from their Title I LEA Grant allocations amounts generated by annual counts of delinquent children in local institutions in order to support projects in LEAs with high proportions of children in local correctional facilities.
LEAs must use between 5 and 10 percent, inclusive, of their Part A allocations for professional development aimed at ensuring that all teachers are highly qualified by the end of the 2005-06 school year (the requirement changes to a simple 5 percent floor in 2004).
School improvement, corrective action, and restructuring potentially impose a variety of local set-asides. Both LEAs and schools identified for improvement, for example, must use at least 10 percent of their allocations for professional development aimed at correcting the deficiencies that led to identification for improvement. And LEAs with schools identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring may be required to use up to 20 percent of their Part A allocations to pay choice-related transportation costs and to provide supplemental educational services to students whose parents request them.
Grants to Local Educational Agencies
(Title I, Part A)
Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) provides local educational agencies (LEAs, or school districts) with extra resources to help improve instruction in high-poverty schools and ensure that poor and minority children have the same opportunity as other children to meet challenging State academic standards. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) reauthorizes the ESEA and incorporates nearly all of the major reforms proposed by President Bush in his own No Child Left Behind framework for education reform, particularly in the areas of assessment, accountability, and school improvement. The new law requires States to develop standards in reading and math, and assessments linked to those standards for all students in grades 3-8. LEAs and schools must use Title I funds for activities that scientifically based research suggests will be most effective in helping all students meet these State standards.
States also must develop annual adequate yearly progress (AYP) objectives-disaggregated by student groups based on poverty, race and ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency-that will result in all students achieving proficiency in reading and math within 12 years. Biennial State participation in the State-level version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress will provide benchmarks for ensuring the rigor of State Standards and Assessments.
NCLB also requires LEAs to permit students in schools that fail to meet annual State AYP objectives for two consecutive years to transfer to a better public school. If schools continue to fail to meet AYP, students will be permitted to use Title I funds to obtain educational services from the public- or private-sector provider selected by their parents from a State-approved list.
The new law requires schools identified for improvement (after failing to make AYP for two consecutive years) to develop improvement plans incorporating strategies from scientifically based research. Schools that fail to improve would be subject to increasingly tough corrective actions-such as replacing school staff or significantly decreasing management authority at the school level-and could ultimately face restructuring, which involves a fundamental change in governance, such as a State takeover or placement under private management. To help States, districts, and schools carry out needed improvements, NCLB significantly increases and makes mandatory the reservation of a portion of Part A Allocations for school improvement.
NCLB also authorizes State Academic Achievement Awards to schools that significantly close achievement gaps or exceed AYP standards for two or more consecutive years, as well as awards to teachers in such schools. However, the new law punishes States that fail to put in place systems of standards, assessments, and accountability by permitting-and in some cases requiring-the Secretary to withhold a portion of Federal funds provided for the administration of Title I.
Major Changes in NCLB Act
Standards and Assessments
Program Effectiveness
School Improvement
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 significantly strengthens the school improvement provisions under section 1116 of Title I. The new law puts students first by requiring LEAs to offer choice and supplemental educational services to students attending schools identified for improvement, dedicates substantial new dollars to State and local improvement efforts, and requires progressively tougher improvement measures over time for schools that fail to improve, including potential reconstitution under a restructuring plan.
School Improvement (failing to make AYP for 2 consecutive years)
Corrective Action
Duration of Improvement Status
LEA Improvement
Qualifications for Teachers and Paraprofessionals
Services to Students in Private Schools
Other Changes
New Accountability Provisions
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 maintains the same general Accountability structure-based on standards, assessments, AYP, and school improvement-as the 1994 ESEA reauthorization. However, the NCLB Act includes the following changes that significantly strengthen that structure:
Authorizes allocation of Part A funds to local educational agencies that meet the requirements of 4 separate funding formulas: Basic Grants, Concentration Grants, Targeted Grants, and Education Finance Incentive Grants. Allocations are based primarily on the number of poor children in each school district (LEA). LEAs receive a single combined allocation that is adjusted by the State under certain circumstances.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 made relatively minor changes to most Part A formula provisions:
The Education Finance Incentive Grant formula was significantly modified by changing the count of children from the total population aged 5-17 to the number of Title I formula children (i.e., primarily census poverty counts). In addition, within-State allocations under the Incentive Grant program are now based on a variation of the Targeted Grants formula. As a result of these changes, the Incentive Grant program is now much more targeted to high-poverty urban and rural districts than under the 1994 law.
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An exclusive Bear in Heaven stream for you...
CFCF who've previously remixed the likes of HEALTH, Holy Ghost!, Porcelain Raft, Owen Pallett, memoryhouse, Junior Boys and Fever Ray, and have a few releases to their name, have morphed Bear in Heaven's drifting but rich 'The Reflection of You' into a svelte, spring-sun drenched dittie. In fact, you can almost imagine Erland Oye bopping along to it like one of those Turntable.fm avatars.
And if you've not heard the original version or if you just want to contrast and compare, here's that:
Bear in Heaven's third album I Love You, It's Cool is set for release on 2nd April via Dead Oceans/Hometapes. You can stream the entire album on their website (bearinheaven.com) but it has been slowed down by 400 000%!!!! As the band explained to NPR, this means that:
"Every single second of music on the album will last over an hour when played on the website. Although technically what you'll hear any time you tune in is a single, drawn-out note, minuscule details, textures and patterns emerge. It's an ingenious take on the concept of music as art and a fascinating look into the intricacies of music at the most microscopic scale…."
Neat? Or not? Whatever. Catch Bear in Heaven live - and at normal speed - at the following shows:
May 2012
16 London Hoxton Bear & Kitchen
17 Brighton Green Door Store
18 Liverpool Leaf / Liverpool Sound City
19 Glasgow Stereo (tbc) / Stag & Dagger
20 Manchester Soup Kitchen
22 Leeds Brudenell Social Club
23 Bristol Louisiana
30 Paris F Point FMR
June 2012
2 Dublin Forbidden Fruit
4 Vienna, AT Chelsea
14 Copenhagen, DK Vera
15 Hultsfred, SE Hultsfred Festival
16 Oslo, NO Blaa


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Vouchers can help Ohioans with higher GED test fee
Ohioans without high school diplomas will have to pay more next year to take a test for an equivalency certificate but can receive vouchers toward that expense if they get career counseling beforehand at certain sites.
The GED test in Ohio is expected to cost $120 in January - triple the current cost - with the switch from a paper test to a computerized version.
Test-takers can get $80 in vouchers toward that cost if they first meet with a counselor at one of Ohio's 91 career-technical district sites, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland reported. The program was allotted $4 million in the state budget.
"A lot of people take the GED because they want a better job," Ohio Department of Education spokesman John Charlton said. "If they are getting counseling to help with a resume and learn about jobs, it helps."
The American Council on Education, which administers the GED, decided the test should reflect college-readiness standards.
More than 19,200 Ohioans took the GED last year, and 13,248 - more than two-thirds of them - passed. About 1.4 million Ohio had no high school diploma, according to the GED Testing Service, the state's vendor.
The new test, which is scored immediately, contains sections on reading, math, science and social studies, each costing $30. The vouchers for test-takers who get career counseling apply $20 to each section, Charlton said.
People who have passed some but not all sections of the old test will have to start fresh with the new version, the newspaper reported.
Those who fail and must retake a section will be charged only $10, Charlton said.
The number taking the GED increased by nearly 2,000 between November and mid-December compared with last year, Charlton said.
The GED is accepted as an alternative to a high school diploma.
Statistics show people lacking a high school diploma or GED have trouble finding jobs, the newspaper reported.


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IntroductionApollonia was founded by the Greeks in 600 BC as an important port along the route between Rome and Byzantium. Emperor Augustus studied there, and Aristotle mentioned the town in his book on politics. The city, 45 mi/75 km southwest of Tirana, lost its status when the harbor silted up and the river changed course after an earthquake in the third century AD. Only a small portion of Apollonia has been excavated, but it is still worth the effort to visit if you are in the area. The most impressive ruin is the restored facade of the Hall of Athletes (bouleuterion). Nearby is the 13th-century Byzantine Monastery of St. Mary. It houses an archaeological museum with sculptures from the ruins. The museum also has an interesting collection of icons and murals.
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Skip to comments.When Did Humans Come to the Americas?
Posted on 01/27/2013 9:08:44 PM PST by Theoria
Recent scientific findings date their arrival earlier than ever thought, sparking hot debate among archaeologists
For much of its length, the slow-moving Aucilla River in northern Florida flows underground, tunneling through bedrock limestone. But here and there it surfaces, and preserved in those inky ponds lie secrets of the first Americans.
For years adventurous divers had hunted fossils and artifacts in the sinkholes of the Aucilla about an hour east of Tallahassee. They found stone arrowheads and the bones of extinct mammals such as mammoth, mastodon and the American ice age horse.
Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History opened a formal excavation in one particular sink. Below a layer of undisturbed sediment they found nine stone flakes that a person must have chipped from a larger stone, most likely to make tools and projectile points. They also found a mastodon tusk, scarred by circular cut marks from a knife. The tusk was 14,500 years old.
The age was surprising, even shocking, for it suddenly made the Aucilla sinkhole one of the earliest places in the Americas to betray the presence of human beings. Curiously, though, scholars largely ignored the discoveries of the Aucilla River Prehistory Project, instead clinging to the conviction that Americas earliest settlers arrived more recently, some 13,500 years ago. But now the sinkhole is getting a fresh look, along with several other provocative archaeological sites that show evidence of an earlier human presence in the Americas, perhaps much earlier.
Which is why I found myself on the banks of the Aucilla with Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. A tall, unassuming 57-year-old, with an easy confidence honed during more than 30 years in the field, he had organized archaeologists and divers to gather more evidence of the sinkholes role in prehistory. This site is as old as anything in North America, Waters said. The context is fine, and the dating is fine, but people just looked at it and said, Hmm, thats interesting, and that was it. It had a lot of potential, but it was in limbo. Were here to confirm the earlier work, and if were lucky, well find some more artifacts.
Waterss team, led by Texas A&M underwater archaeologist Jessi Halligan, worked at the Page-Ladson sink, named for Buddy Page, who discovered it, and John Ladson, the propertys owner. The sink lies 30 feet below the opaque surface of the Aucilla, which, following heavy rains, was dyed nearly black by humus from the hardwood hammock. Fish were jumping in the water, while birds, turtles and the occasional gator patrolled nearby. Were it not for Halligans divers, there would be no human presence and the silence would be absolute.
Underwater archaeological sites are staked out and marked in meter-square quadrants, just like open-air excavations. The mud, troweled away by one diver, was fed into the mouth of a four-inch suction dredge held by a second diver. The dredge discharged into a pair of mesh screens mounted on a skiff moored in midstream. Big piecesstones, bones, leaves and perhaps human artifactscollected on the top screen, a quarter-inch mesh, and the small stuff was caught by the sixteenth-inch mesh below.
First the researchers had to clear the site of the detritus that had accumulated in the 15 years since the first excavation ended. Then, to reach the most promising level, divers removed a ten-foot layer of clay that overlay it. The work was tediouslike diving in dark roast coffee, said James Dunbar, an archaeologist and member of the original Aucilla team whod returned for a second lookbut the blanket of sediment guaranteed the sites integrity. Everything below the sediment was as old as the people who left it there. In the oxygen-deprived deposits within the Aucilla mud, nothing decays.
Working in the Stygian gloom with lamps and suction pumps, the divers unearthed a number of small bone fragments, the fist-size vertebra of a large mammal and a manhole cover-size shoulder blade that might have belonged to the same mastodon whose tusk bore the cut marks of the ancient hunters. Also recovered in the fine-mesh screen were many pounds of mastodon digesta, the remains of vegetation that the six-ton beast ground to a mulch-like texture and swallowed.
The observations the researchers made in their days at the sinkhole validated the original excavation. (And on a subsequent expedition they found more mastodon bones.) Each new discovery generated fresh enthusiasm. All we need now, said Halligan, are more human artifacts.
About 100,000 years ago, modern human beings started spreading out from their initial homeland in Africa to occupy Europe, Asia and, by sea, even Australia, displacing or absorbing Neanderthals and other archaic hominid species. That diaspora took about 70,000 years, and when it was completed our ancestors stood triumphant.
The peopling of the Americas, scholars tend to agree, happened sometime in the past 25,000 years. In what might be called the standard view of events, a wave of big game hunters crossed into the New World from Siberia at the end of the last ice age, when the Bering Strait was a land bridge that had emerged after glaciers and continental ice sheets froze enough of the worlds water to lower sea level as much as 400 feet below what it is today.
The key question is precisely when the migration occurred. To be sure, there were constraints imposed by North Americas glacial history. Researchers suggest that it happened sometime after gradual warming began 25,000 years ago during the depths of the ice age, but well before a severe cold snap reversed the trend 12,900 years ago. Early in this window, when the weather was very cold, migration by boat was more likely because immense expanses of ice would have turned an overland journey into a nightmarish ordeal. Later, however, the ice receded, opening up plausible land bridges for trekkers coming across the Bering Strait.
For decades the most compelling evidence of this standard view consisted of distinctive, exquisitely crafted, grooved bifacial projectile points, called Clovis points after the New Mexico town near where they were first discovered in 1929. With the aid of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s, archaeologists determined that the Clovis sites were 13,500 years old. This came as little surprise, for the first Clovis points were found in ancient campsites along with the remains of mammoth and ice age bison, creatures that researchers knew had died out thousands of years ago. But the discovery dramatically undermined the prevailing wisdom that human beings and these ice age megafauna did not exist in America at the same time. Scholars flocked to New Mexico to see for themselves.
The idea that the Clovis people, as they came to be known, were the first Americans quickly won over the research community. The evidence was unequivocal, said Ted Goebel, a colleague of Waters at the Center for the Study of the First Americans. Clovis sites, it turned out, were spread all over the continent, and there was a clear association of the fauna with hundreds, if not thousands, of artifacts, Goebel said. Again and again it was the full picture.
Furthermore, the earliest Clovis dates corresponded roughly to the right geological momentafter the ice age warming, before the great cold snap. The northern ice had receded far enough so incoming settlers could curl around to the eastern slope of North Americas coastal mountains and hike south along an ice-free corridor between the cordilleran mountain glaciers to the west and the huge Laurentide ice sheet that swaddled much of Canada to the east. It was a very nice package, and thats what sealed the deal, Goebel said. Clovis as the first Americans became the standard, and its really a high bar.
When they reached the temperate prairies, the migrants found an environment far different from what we know todayboth fantastic and terrifying. There were mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, camels, bison, lions, saber-toothed cats, cheetahs, dire wolves weighing 150 pounds, eight-foot beavers and short-faced bears that stood more than six feet tall on all fours and weighed 1,800 pounds. Clovis points, finely made and strong, were well suited for hunting large animals.
The hunters spread through the United States and Mexico, the story went, pursuing prey until too few animals remained to support them in the last cold snap. Radiocarbon dates show that most of the megafauna became extinct around 12,700 years ago. The Clovis points disappeared then as well, perhaps because there were no longer any large animals to hunt.
The Clovis theory, over time, acquired the force of dogma. We all learned it as undergraduates, Waters recalled. Any artifacts that scholars said came before Clovis, or competing theories that cast doubt on the Clovis-first idea, were ridiculed by the archaeological establishment, discredited as bad science or ignored.
Take South America. In the late 1970s, the U.S. archaeologist Tom D. Dillehay and his Chilean colleagues began excavating what appeared to be an ancient settlement on a creek bank at Monte Verde, in southern Chile. Radiocarbon readings on organic material collected from the ruins of a large tent-like structure showed that the site was 14,800 years old, predating Clovis finds by more than 1,000 years. The 50-foot-long main structure, made of wood with a hide roof, was divided into what appeared to be individual spaces, each with a separate hearth. Outside was a second, wishbone-shaped structure that apparently contained medicinal plants. Mastodons were butchered nearby. The excavators found cordage, stone choppers and augers and wooden planks preserved in the bog, along with plant remains, edible seeds and traces of wild potatoes. Significantly, though, the researchers found no Clovis points. That posed a challenge: either Clovis hunters went to South America without their trademark weapons (highly unlikely) or people settled in South America even before the Clovis people arrived.
There must have been people somewhere in the Americas 15,000 or 16,000 years ago, or perhaps as long as 18,000 years ago, said Dillehay, now at Vanderbilt University.
Of the researchers working sites that seemed to precede Clovis people, Dillehay was singled out for special criticism. He was all but ostracized by Clovis advocates for years. When he was invited to meetings, speakers stood up to denounce Monte Verde. Its not fun when people write to your dean and try to get you fired, he recalled. And then your grad students try to get jobs and they cant get jobs.
The Monte Verde site gained wider acceptance after a panel of well-known archaeologists visited it in 1997 and reached a consensus. Dillehay was pleased that the panel had verified the integrity of his teams work, but it was a small group of people, he said, meaning others in the profession continued to harbor doubts.
Two years later, an independent archaeologist, Stuart Fiedel, denounced Monte Verdes authenticity in Scientific American Discovering Archaeology. Dillehay fails to provide even the most basic information about the locations of key artifacts at Monte Verde, Fiedel wrote. Unless and until numerous discrepancies in the final report are convincingly clarified, this site should not be construed as conclusive proof of a pre-Clovis occupation in South America.
The skepticism lingers. Gary Haynes, a University of Nevada-Reno anthropologist and a Clovis advocate, is not convinced. There are only a few artifacts, and no flakes, he said of Monte Verde, citing some of Fiedels arguments. There are a lot of things that have been interpreted as artifacts but dont look like them. Many of the things may not be the same age, because it is difficult to know exactly where they were found in the site.
Dillehay rebuffs the criticisms: More than 1,500 pages were published on Monte Verde, which is five times more than were ever written on any other site in the Americas, including Clovis. All of the artifacts came from the same surface covered by the peat bog and they all made sense in terms of the sites activities. The vast majority are flaked pebble tools, typical of South American unifacial technologies. North Americans impose their evaluations on South America without even knowing the data down south. He went on, Now the field has moved on, and there are numerous pre-Clovis sites that have come to the forefront.
At the Buttermilk Creek Complex archaeological site north of Austin, Texas, in a layer of earth beneath a known Clovis excavation, researchers led by Waters over the past several years found 15,528 pre-Clovis artifactsmost of them toolmaking chert flakes, but also 56 chert tools. Using optically stimulated luminescence, a technique that analyzes light energy trapped in sediment particles to identify the last time the soil was exposed to sunlight, they found that the oldest artifacts dated to 15,500 years agosome 2,000 years older than Clovis. The work confirms the emerging view that people occupied the Americas before Clovis, the researchers concluded in Science in 2011. In Waters view, the people who made the oldest artifacts were experimenting with stone technology that, over time, may have developed further into Clovis-style tools.
Waters recently landed other blows to the Clovis orthodoxy in collaboration with Thomas Stafford, president of the Colorado-based Stafford Research Laboratories. In one series of experiments using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), a dating technique that is more precise than earlier radiocarbon measurements, they reanalyzed a mastodon rib from a skeleton previously recovered in Manis, Washington, and found to have a projectile point lodged in it. The original radiocarbon tests had surrounded the discovery in controversy because they showed it to be 13,800 years oldcenturies older than Clovis. The new AMS tests confirmed that age estimate date, and DNA analysis showed that the projectile point was mastodon bone.
Deploying AMS technology, Waters and Stafford also retested many known Clovis samples from around the country, some collected decades earlier. The results, Waters said, blew me away. Instead of a culture spanning about 700 years, the analysis shrunk the Clovis window to 13,100 to 12,800 years ago. This new time frame required the Siberian hunters to negotiate the ice-free corridor, settle two continents and put the megafauna on the road to extinction within 300 years, an incredible feat. Not possible, Waters said. Youve got people in South America at the same time as Clovis, and the only way they could have gotten down there that fast is if they transported like Star Trek.
But Haynes, of the University of Nevada-Reno, disagrees. Think of a small number of very mobile people covering a lot of ground, he suggests. They could have been walking thousands of kilometers per year.
Goebel, of the Texas A&M Center for the Study of the First Americans, characterizes his attitude toward pre-Clovis finds as acceptance with reservation. He said hes disturbed by nagging shortcomings. Each of the older sites appears to be one-of-a-kind, he said, without a demonstrated pattern across a region. With Clovis, he adds, it is clear that the original sites were part of something bigger. The absence of a consistent pre-Clovis pattern is one of the things that has hung up a lot of people, including myself.
The discovery of numerous artifacts that pre-date Clovis has, over the years, required scholars to come up with different ideas about not only when people arrived in the Americas but how they got here. For instance, if they were already established 14,800 years ago, they must not have used the famed ice-free corridor through North America: Researchers say that it would not appear for another 1,000 years.
Maybe the first Americans didnt walk here but came in small boats and followed the coastline, some researchers say. That possibility was first suggested in the 1950s with the discovery of Clovis-era human bonesbut no artifactson Santa Rosa Island in the Santa Barbara Channel off the California coast. Over the past decade, though, a joint University of Oregon-Smithsonian team of archaeologists unearthed dozens of stemmed and barbed projectile points from Santa Rosa and other Channel Islands, along with the remains of fish, shellfish, seabirds and seals. Radiocarbon dates showed much of the organic material was about 12,000 years old, roughly within the Clovis time frame.
The findings do not prove that the continents first settlers came by sea, of course. The islands were only about four miles offshore at the time, and could have been visited by people whod settled on the mainland. Still, the sites establish that these island dwellers were seafarers of a sort and accustomed to a seafood diet.
Jon Erlandson, a University of Oregon archaeologist, and Torben Rick, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, propose a pre-Clovis kelp highway for coast-hugging seamen skirting the southern edge of the Bering land bridge on their way from northeast Asia to the New World. People came between 15,000 and 16,000 years ago by sea, and could eat the same seaweed and seafood as they moved along the coastline in boats, Erlandson said. It seems logical. The notion that ancient people could travel great distances by boat isnt far-fetched; many anthropologists believe that humans voyaged from the Asian mainland to Australia 45,000 years ago.
Though Erlandson said hes convinced that the Clovis people were not the first in the Americas, he acknowledged that definitive proof of a pre-Clovis coastal route may never be found: Whatever beach settlements existed in those days of especially low sea level were long ago submerged or swept away by Pacific tides.
Moreover, the Channel Islands projectiles have nothing in common with Clovis points, as Erlandson pointed out. They appear to be related to a different toolmaking approach called the western stemmed tradition; featuring stems of different shapes that attach the projectile points to spears or darts, they were prevalent in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Basin. And they do not have the fluting characteristic of Clovis. Those observations strengthen the view that other tool-making human cultures were present in the Americas at the same time as the Clovis people, and in all likelihood beforehand as well.
The link between the Channel Islands artifacts and the western stemmed tradition recently acquired greater significance: Inside the Paisley Caves in Oregon, scientists excavated similar points that were associated with organic material yielding radiocarbon dates 13,000 years oldcontemporary with Clovis.
The University of Oregons Dennis L. Jenkins, who led the Paisley excavation, re-examined a site first explored in the 1930s. The earlier documentation (photographs and some film) was insufficient to show a definite association between the bones and artifacts. But soon, he said, we had artifacts and we had the bones from the site. To determine if the human artifacts were the same age as the animal remains, the researchers conducted radiocarbon dating tests on human coprolitespetrified fecesextracting carbon residue from the organic material digested long ago. They also analyzed human mitochondrial DNA in the sample, probably shed from the intestinal wall, and determined that it came from a modern human with an apparently Asian genome. The toolmakers had lived 13,000 years ago.
And there is nothing connecting this to any Clovis site, Jenkins said. You have two technologies existing at the same time in North America, and there is no direct immediate relationship.
To answer critics, Jenkins and his team tested the DNA of project participants, to make sure they had not contaminated the coprolites, and tested the sediments surrounding the coprolites for modern rodent urine and other telltale signs the area had been tainted. They found no evidence of contemporary animal or human DNA.
Jenkins and his colleagues published the final results this year and closed the site: Weve gotten to the bottom, he said. Weve convinced the people who are willing to be convinced that the caves are as old as Clovis, if not older.
Perhaps the most radical scholarly work suggests the Americas were colonized first by immigrants from Europe several thousand years before Clovis. The theory is the brainchild of Dennis Stanford, a curator of North American archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History, and Bruce Bradley, an archaeologist at Britains University of Exeter. In their 2012 book Across Atlantic Ice, they suggest that these Europeans reached the New World more than 20,000 years ago, settled in the eastern United States, developed the Clovis technology over several thousand years, then spread across the continent.
This theory is based partly on similarities between Clovis points and finely crafted laurel leaf points from Europes Solutrean culture, which flourished in southwestern France and northern Spain between 24,000 and 17,000 years ago. Stanford and Bradley argue that artifacts found at Page-Ladson, as well as other pre-Clovis sites, including the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in western Pennsylvania and the sand dunes of Cactus Hill in southeastern Virginia, have similarities to Solutrean technologies.
The Solutreans, whose territory on the European continent was apparently rather compact, may have been forced by encroaching glaciers and extreme cold to cluster on the Atlantic coast. At some point, Stanford and Bradley say, the stresses of overpopulation may have forced some Solutreans to escape by sea. They headed north and west beneath the Atlantic ice sheet to nudge into North America at the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
Stanford and Bradley say evidence for the Solutreans presence in America includes stone artifacts gathered by archaeologists at several sites on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, all producing dates more than 20,000 years old. Most of the dates were derived from organic material found with the artifacts. The exception was a mastodon tusk with attached bone and teeth netted by a fisherman in 1974, along with a laurel leaf-shaped stone knife. Stanford found the tusk to be 22,760 years old. Among other things, the Solutrean hypothesis provides context not only for the Clovis people, but also for North Americas pre-Clovis sites. And it does not rule out Bering Sea migrationsthose could have happened, too.
Solutrean evolved into Clovis over close to 13,000 years, Stanford said, and the Clovis hunters began migrating westward when the cold snap brought dry, windy, inhospitable weather to the East Coast.
But the archaeological evidence found so far in support of a European migration more than 20,000 years ago has raised skepticism. And as is the case with the kelp highway, many sites that could prove or disprove the hypothesis are now underwater. Dillehay said he had found the idea of an Atlantic crossing worthy of further investigation, even though the hard evidence is not yet there.
Waters, of Texas A&M, is skeptical. Im looking for clean evidence, he said. Were past Clovis first, and were developing a new model. You read the literature and you use your imagination, but then you have to go out and find the empirical evidence to support your hypothesis.
None of the doubts expressed by critics have stopped Stanford and Bradley, veterans of the Clovis wars, from pushing forward. Solutrean people became more and more efficient in exploiting the rich sea margin resources, they write in Across Atlantic Ice. Eventually their range expansion led them to a whole new world in the west.
These days Waters says his research focuses on pre-Clovis or likely pre-Clovis sites where more information can be obtained. Unlike many of his colleagues, Waters isnt captive to peer reviewers at granting agencies; the Center for the Study of the First Americans also has its own funding. In the past youd propose something and send it out for review, and the Clovis people would shoot it down, he said.
It was against the backdrop of renewed enthusiasm for findings predating Clovis settlements that Waters reopened the Page-Ladson site on the Aucilla River. For Waters, the debate about Clovis is finished, he said over breakfast one morning in Perry, Florida, before we went out to the Aucilla site. The objective everywhere we go is to learn more about pre-Clovis by doing good science. Im investigating the first Americans. If some folks dont want to believe it, he added, thats up to them.
Most analyses of contemporary and ancient human DNA suggest that Americas first immigrants came from Asia. They traveled over a land bridge or along the coast. An alternative theory is that members of Europes Solutrean culture voyaged to the East Coast.
Archaeologist Michael Waters (in Tennessee) challenges the idea that the Clovis people were the first in the Americas.
A Clovis point from Colorado is 12,000 to 14,000 years old.
Oregons Paisley Caves have provided clues to the peopling of the Americas, including recent sources of ancient human DNA.
Cactus Hill, Virginia
Scientists found a 14,500-year-old tusk near the Page-Ladson lagoon on the Aucilla Rivier, Florida.
The items found at a Monte Verde, Chile, site were once considered controversial.
Early hunters pursued mastadons. At Monte Verde, Chile, a tusk served as a gouge.
Clovis points found in New Mexico.
Mastodon ribs were used as fire pokers.
A mastodon tooth and vertebra, Tennessee.
Dennis Stanford (on the Chesapeake Bay) argues that Europeans in boats skirted the ice to America.
A laser in Dennis Stanfords lab probes a projectile point.
first. nice summary and pics.
The point is, the Clovis culture marked the peopling of North America on a scale beyond anything preceding it. It was an "explosion", and findings of earlier incursions, whatever their merit, do nothing to diminish this fact.
Thanks for an excellent and thought provoking article.
For later read...Sweetwater creek petroglyph.
As an "old earth creationist", I am not surprised.
As a dispensationalist, I am not surprised.
As a lay historian, I am intrigued.
I don't think there were even the Basque-Georgian peoples there at that point in time.
Can I open a casino and sell tax free smokes?
Can I open a casino and sell tax free smokes?
Liberty and Justice for ALL.
There are humans in America?
|GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks Theoria.
Regardless:(Posted to FR in 2001)
"Although scientists believed they had retrieved DNA from the fairly intact brain matter recovered from some of the human burials, subsequent research has shown that the mtDNA lineages reported are absent in all other prehistoric and contemporary Native American populations studied to date. Further attempts to retrieve more DNA have failed, and an amplification study has shown that there is no analyzable DNA left in the Windover burials. "
This concurs with the assessment of Bryan Sykes (in his latest book) that the DNA is not Native American and likely European. (Or something close to that
Bye, Bye Beringia (8,000 Year Old Site In Florida)
These people used looms to make their clothing.
Thanks blam. There's some additional articles about PreClovis linked off this one on the original site.
The Aurignacian culture (pron.: /ɔrɪɡˈneɪʃən/ or /ɔrɪnˈjeɪʃən/) is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic, located in Europe and southwest Asia. It lasted broadly within the period from ca. 45,000 to 35,000 years ago (about 37,000 to 27,000 years ago on the uncalibrated radiocarbon timescale; between ca. 47,000 and 41,000 years ago using the most recent calibration of the radiocarbon timescale[1]). The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute-Garonne area of France.
The oldest known example of figurative art, the Venus of Hohle Fels, comes from this culture. It was discovered in September 2008 in a cave at Schelklingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany.
Thanks for this additional new link (which we can't quote from), Renfield!
New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America
David Keys
Tuesday 28 February 2012
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