RonnieAdventure #0063 - Calico Early Man Site, San Bernardino County, California

There is probably not an archeological site anywhere in the world that is more controversial than The Calico Early Man Site, located about 15 miles east of Barstow, California.

For years people had found rocks in the Calico Hills that appeared to have been chipped into ancient scrapers, but most archeologist were not interested in looking at the site. Then, in 1959 a California archeologist traveled to the British Museum of Natural History in London for a meeting and while she was there she showed the scraper samples to Dr. Louis Leakey. Leakey had been convinced that the number and distribution of native languages in the Americas required more than 12,000 years to evolve, but most archeologist rejected his theory and he had no evidence to prove otherwise.

After seeing the scrapers, Leakey decided that the Calico Hills site may be the place to find evidence that would prove there was a human presence in the Americas for more than 12,000 years. Leakey visited the site and discovered that the Calico Hills where the scrapers were found had been located on the shoreline of a freshwater Pleistocene lake that emptied (probably catastrophically) approximately 18,000 years ago. Preliminary data suggested that before the lake emptied there would have been rich vegetation in the area to support a human population.

In 1963 Leakey obtained research funds from the National Geographic Society to excavate a site in Calico Hills. The level of excavation at the site varied with time; but Leakey continued to be involved in the project until his death in 1972, at which time the site was taken over by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Over the years, thousands of rocks that bear a strong resemblance to prehistoric tools have been found at the site, but no other evidence of human activity has ever been discovered.

Then, in 1973, geologist Vance Haynes made three visits to the site and decided that the "artifacts" were not scrapers, but were just naturally formed geofacts. According to Haynes, the geofacts were formed by stones becoming fractured in an ancient river that was once on the site and the fractured stones just resemble scrapers. Other papers have been published that agree with Haynes, but there are also archeologists that disagree with the Haynes findings.

The debate continues today on whether the fractured rocks found at the site are "tools" or "geofacts." The site is now open to the public and various guided and self-guided walking tours are offered. The Rock Wren Pit is still being excavated and the public is invited to participate in site excavations the first full weekend of each month. Who knows, maybe you could be the person that discovers the first evidence of human activity at the site!