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NUMBER 30 211
found. At Locality II, a prismatic obsidian blade
was recovered, which appears to be much later in
age than the date would suggest. Again, the basic
problem is the dating of the hearths and the
possibility that some artifacts were found out of
statigraphic context.
The El Bosque site in Nicaragua (Gruhn, 1978;
Bryan, 1979; Espinosa, 1976) contains a number
of tabular chert objects flaked at the edges. Associated
faunal remains include mastodon and
sloth. Several bone apatite and collegen dates
suggest an age between 18,000 and 30,000 years.
In January 1974, I observed that none of the
bones showed evidence of human modification.
The chert "artifacts" found with the bones come
from an outcrop located adjacent to the site where
it occurs in veins that, when weathered, break out
in tabular pieces with crushed edges identical to
the presumed stone tools found at the site. A
landslide (Page, 1978) may have mixed the chert
and faunal remains into a boulder slide field. At
the present time, I view El Bosque as nothing
more than a very interesting paleontological site.
In El Jobo, Venezula (Cruxent, 1956; Rouse
and Cruxent, 1963; Bryan et al., 1978), artifacts
have been found on the terraces of the Rio Pedregal
for many years. However, the main excavated
site is the Taima-Taima locality, a spring
site where remains of mastodon were possibly
associated with El Jobo projectile points. Radiocarbon
dates on organic matter indicate an
age of around 14,000 years. If so, El Jobo represents
a lithic projectile point tradition earlier than
Clovis. This conclusion would mean that there
were at least two cultural traditions in the Western
Hemisphere and would support the multilinear
evolution model proposed by Bryan (1978).
The El Jobo points are highly reminiscent of later
projectile point styles from many areas of Latin
America.
Since Taima-Taima is essentially a bog deposit,
association of artifacts, faunal remains, and dated
organic material could be fortuitous due to mixing
of saturated sediments. Hopefully, there exist
other El Jobo sites in which early dated hearths,
artifacts, and Pleistocene faunal remains can be
found in unquestionable association.
Pikimachay Cave in Peru has received much
attention in the recent literature (MacNeish,
1971, 1979b). Based on bone dates from overlying
levels, the earliest complex (Pacaicasa) is reputed
to range from over 20,000 years to about 14,000
years ago. Artifacts from this stage have been
identified as large, crude bifacial and slab choppers,
cleavers, hammers, scraping planes, and
crude scrapers or spokeshave-like objects. Faunal
remains included sloth, horse, deer, and giant cat.
According to Lynch (1974:459) most of the socalled
tools are merely angular rock fragments
fallen from the walls of the cave itself, and it is
difficult to prove that they were used as tools.
The artifacts from two strata overlying the
Pacaicasa levels have been grouped together to
define the Ayacucho complex occupations. These
occupations have a number of radiometric dates
that cluster around 14,000 to 12,000 years old.
Artifacts include scrapers, spokeshaves, burins,
denticulates, unifacial projectile points, and bone
tools. Associated fauna include sloth, horse, and
camel, as well as the remains of more modern
forms. If these dates and the associations are
correct, then there is little question that man
lived in the Andes long before the first fluted
point was made in North America.
The Tagua-Tagua site, Chile, with an early
carbon date of 11,430±320 B.P. (Montane, 1968),
represents a kill site in which mastodon, horse,
and deer bones are associated with unifacial flake
tools. There is no question as to the association of
the artifacts with the faunal remains, especially
the butchered bone. The single date should be
supported with others.
During excavation for a deep well at the turn
of the last century the Quereo, Los Vilos site in
central Chile had produced mastodon bones. The
bones were placed in the Museo de Historia
Natural, Santiago, Chile, and published by Sundt
(1903). They received little attention until a radiocarbon
date of 9,100±300 B.P. was published
(Paskoff, 1971) and later the Chilean archeologist,
Julio Montane, began a cooperative program
with the Smithsonian Institution in 1972 and
reexamined the bones. With archeologist C. Bahamondes,
he conducted test excavations in 1973