Ice Man

            The topic of my article, taken from the New York Times is about archaeologists finding evidence that human life has been around longer than speculated. These new discoveries have come from an old riverbed near the Ural Mountains. Through their findings of stone tools, animal bones, and mammoth tusks that show signs of chopping in them due to human activity which have carbon dated, they have found that either humans or Neaderthals have been around longer than once thought. This would extend the already long period of the Paleolithic era by about 15,000 years and proof that life existed at such high altitudes.
             These findings relate to anthropology a lot more than they just being artifacts. This is due to the problems that arise from the findings. The first problem is the fact that the artifacts came from a riverbed. This means that the artifacts could have been replaced from their original place and put in their current position by the movement of water. Also with the presence of water one could say that the artifacts could have been placed in different strata with its tumbling movements. This could pose a problem with the relativeness between the stone tools and the markings on the tusks of the mammoth. This meant that both could have come from different geologic time frames. From this evidence there will be controversy for a while.
             As stated by A.J. Gowlett that "Although there are questions to be answered, the artifacts illustrate both the capacity of early humans to do the unexpected .". This meant that the discovery has some holes in it yet it still proves that the early humans were able to adapt to their environment and live in cold areas which was thought of as quite a hard thing to do without a lot of technology in their primitive lives. Though they cannot distinguish which kind of species these artifacts could be from, whether it hominids or Neaderthals these findings still have some significance.