Graham Hancock on history: what the evidence says · JRE #1284
“The site he excavated in the Yukon was re-excavated in 2017 and every single thing he said was correct even though they had just sneered at him”
What the evidence says
Jacques Cinq-Mars excavated Bluefish Caves in the Yukon from 1977 to 1987 and argued, based on radiocarbon dates and purportedly cut-marked animal bones, that humans occupied the site during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), roughly 24,000 years ago, far earlier than the mainstream view at the time (which held first peopling of North America occurred around 14,000 years ago). This proposal was largely rejected or ignored by other archaeologists for decades due to doubts about the site's stratigraphy and the anthropogenic origin of the bone marks. In 2017, Lauriane Bourgeon, Ariane Burke, and Thomas Higham published a new taphonomic and AMS radiocarbon analysis of the existing Bluefish Caves bone collection (not a new physical excavation) in PLOS ONE, identifying cut-marked bones dated to as early as 24,000 cal BP and concluding that Bluefish Caves is the oldest known archaeological site in North America, offering support for the Beringian standstill hypothesis. This represents a substantial, genuine vindication of Cinq-Mars's central claim about the site's age and human presence there during the LGM. However, describing the study as a re-excavation and asserting that every single thing he said was correct overstates both the nature of the 2017 work and its reception: a 2023 review in Proceedings of the Royal Society B notes that the Bluefish Caves evidence for LGM-era occupation, while notable, has been disputed among specialists, so the site's interpretation remains an active subject of reassessment rather than universally and completely confirmed in every detail.