Human Poop Dated to 13,200 Years Ago



Archaeologist Dennis Jenkins from the University of Oregon led a team of researchers to study ancient artifacts in Paisley Cave in south-central Oregon. Digging down to a depth of nearly 7 feet, the team discovered stone points used for spears or darts.

The style of how the stone points were made led the researchers to classify them as Western Stemmed, which differ from the famous Clovis stone tools. For years, Clovis stone tools were thought to be the oldest tools and represented the first humans to settle in North America

However, evolutionary archaeologists like Jenkins now say that the Western Stemmed tools they found are as old or older than the oldest known Clovis tools. But how did they come up with a date for the stone tools discovered in Paisley Cave?

Human poop.

Found in the same layer of sediment as the stone tools, the team discovered human coprolites. Unlike dinosaur and other coprolites that have fossilized into stone, the human specimens found in the cave were not fossilized, simply very dried out. This allowed the researchers to have them radiocarbon dated. In fact, they had multiple tests done on the poop.

From the various tests, they concluded that the human poop was 13,200 years old. Since the stone tools were found in association with the poop, it places the Paisley Cave specimens to be as old and concurrent to the Clovis tools found elsewhere in the U.S. according to evolutionary dating.

An interesting note is that the team discovered more human poop deeper in the cave sediment and had it dated to 14,500 years old, but no stone tools were found with it.

Evolutionary scientists believe that radiocarbon dating is so precise these days that it can be used to determine dates such as 13,200 and 14,500 years, but is it?

The entire accuracy of radiocarbon dating is based upon the assumption of a constant rate of carbon-14 being absorbed by living organisms and a constant rate of decay. But what if either rate was not always constant? What if something happened in the past that would have either increased the amount of carbon-14 added into the environment?

In Genesis 6-8, we read about a worldwide flood that completely destroyed everything on earth. The mechanisms of the Flood would have added tremendous amounts of carbon and carbon-14 into the environment. The tremendous energy forces released during the Flood could also have had an effect on the rate of radioactive decay for carbon and other elements used in dating techniques.

From a biblical perspective, I would place the date of the Paisley Cave artifacts to be no older than 4,200 years old. Allow me to explain.

Using the genealogies in Genesis, the Flood occurred 1656 years after Creation or 4,360 years ago using Ussher’s chronology placing creation 4,004 years before Christ. Following the Genesis genealogies, we follow Shem who fathered Arpachshad 4 years after the Flood, who fathered Shela 35 years later, who fathered Eber 30 years later, who fathered Peleg 34 years later. This means that Peleg was born 103 years after the Flood.

Genesis 10:25 tells us that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg. While this is controversial among theologians, many believe that the division of the earth was a reference to the dispersion from Babel which occurs in Genesis 12.

One argument for this can be made by the fact that Abram was born 191 years after the birth of Peleg. Genesis 12:1 tells us about God telling Abram to leave his country and his father’s house and travel to the land that the Lord would show him. That indicates that the Babel dispersion had taken place sometime before Abram was born. In fact, it had to be some time before Abram was born because different people groups had already settled in various places and established cities and kingdoms.

The dispersion had to have taken place sometime between 4,257 years ago and 4,066 years ago. You can figure that it would have taken a few years for some of the people to have traveled from Babel across Asia the Bering Strait and into North America.

Therefore, I would date the human poop found in Paisley cave to be somewhere between 4,200 and 4,100 years old at the oldest. And considering the effects the Flood had on carbon-14, I trust the probable dates gleaned from Scripture over the dates obtained by radiocarbon dating methods which are based on assumptions that are possibly quite flawed.

Reference:

Amos, Jonathan. Oregon stone tools enliven ‘earliest Americans’ debate, BBC News, July 13, 2012.

Many thanks to the Team at Creation Revolution For This Article!