At http://phys.org/print328513988.html … artifacts from a very early period of human activity have been found – Clovis and Pre-Clovis. The deciding factor will in the dating of sediment samples associated with the remains. It is yet to be confirmed they are more than 13,500 years old. This is before the Younger Dryas and deep within the warm period immediately following the end of the Ice Age – which occurred contemporary with the Oldest Dryas Event.
The site in question, at Tuttle Creek and the Big Blue River, was investigated by students of Kansas University. Expecting to find Clovis artifacts they were surprised at the depth of the deposit and the possibility now is that the site is Pre-Clovis – but how long does the Pre extend? According to Ralfe Mandel the remains belong to a small family unit of hunters, a group of five or six people moving around the local landscape and following herds of animals. It will be interesting to hear what else they discover. Why were herds of animals assumed to be in abundance – had they not been killed off at the end of the Ice Age?
Lots of important queries involved. Kansas is a long way from the ice sheet and the glaciers but what was the environment like at the time of the deposit. Incidentally, William Thompson adds, Ignatius Donnelly, Ragnorak: the Age of Fire and Gravel (1883) is available to download free from www.sacred-texts.com/atl/rag/ which is cited in Trevor Palmer's book, Perilous Planet Earth, Cambridge University Press (2003) and variously by Talbot and Thornhill (2005) among others.