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Celilo Falls was the oldest continually occupied village in the Western Hemisphere. It was obliterated by rising waters in 1957. There are claims that the site had been occupied for 15,000 years, but I have been unable to find any carbon dating. It's unlikely any was done before the site was flooded. Post ice age occupation of 9000 to 11,000 years seems more reasonable.
I'm admittedly uninformed -- but curious about it.
At 15,000 years it would even rival Jericho so I'm quite skeptical. "Continuously occupied" also sets off alarm bells. At certain seasons of the year, it was probably very popular for a period of time. One would expect some huge middens or other major evidence even for just 9,000 years.
Meadowcrift Rockshelter (PA) shows evidence of occupation since 19K yrs. before present. The dates for the peopling of North America are being pushed back. 15,000 yBP for Celilo Falls isn't implausible.
No doubt that people were in North America well before 15,000 years ago. Some of the dates coming out of South America go back further by thousands of years, and if they walked there, they had to be in North America much earlier than Clovis. Even if they went by boat along the coast they had to be here earlier than we know. Rising sea levels after the ice melted might conceal the evidence. My skepticism only involves the continuously occupied idea. It depends on how that is defined, I guess.
Celilo Falls was the oldest continually occupied village in the Western Hemisphere. It was obliterated by rising waters in 1957. There are claims that the site had been occupied for 15,000 years, but I have been unable to find any carbon dating. It's unlikely any was done before the site was flooded. Post ice age occupation of 9000 to 11,000 years seems more reasonable.
Anyone who was there 15,000 years ago probably went for a swim. Up to about 10,000 years ago, a lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet dammed the Clark Fork river in western Montana, creating a lake about the size of lakes Erie and Ontario combined. Once the lake got large enough, the ice dam would fail catastrophically, releasing 500 cubic miles of water in about two days. The dam would then reform, repeating the entire process at least 40 times, the last one 10 to 11,000 years ago.
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