Pendejo Cave is a geological feature and archaeological site located in southern
New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
about 20 miles east of
Orogrande. Archaeologist
Richard S. MacNeish
Richard Stockton MacNeish (April 29, 1918 – January 16, 2001), known to many as "Scotty", was an American archaeologist. His fieldwork revolutionized the understanding of the development of agriculture in the New World and the prehistory of sev ...
claimed that human occupation of the cave pre-dates by tens of thousands of years the
Clovis Culture
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 ...
, traditionally believed to be one of the oldest if not the oldest culture in the Americas.
Description
Pendejo is a relatively small cave, only 5 meters wide, 12 meters deep, and having a maximum height of 3 meters. It is below the rim of an escarpment, facing north, and about above the canyon floor. The cave is located at an elevation of amidst the sparse desert vegetation of the
Chihuahua Desert Chihuahua may refer to:
Places
*Chihuahua (state), a Mexican state
**Chihuahua (dog), a breed of dog named after the state
**Chihuahua cheese, a type of cheese originating in the state
**Chihuahua City, the capital city of the state
**Chihuahua Mun ...
. A slightly more
mesic habitat
In ecology, a mesic habitat is a type of habitat with a moderate or well-balanced supply of moisture, e.g., a mesic forest, a temperate hardwood forest, or dry-mesic prairie. Mesic habitats transition to xeric shrublands in a non-linear fashion, ...
is found at the foot of the cliffs.
Pendejo is a Spanish word and literally means ''"a pubic hair"'', but in Mexico it can also be a vulgar insult to someone's intelligence.
Archaeological history
Pendejo Cave was discovered in 1978, and twelve years later, in early 1990, the first archaeological expedition headed by MacNeish excavated the site. Another excavation occurred one year later, in late winter and early spring of 1991.
Clovis (c. 11,000 BCE) tools were found in the cave, along with tools from later Native societies. Unifacial shavers, utilized flakes, and other artifacts were uncovered and attributed to various eras, along with several examples of worked bone, including a bone awl made from the scapula of a horse, and a knife made from a rib bone.
MacNeish claimed to have found even earlier
Native American artifacts in the cave. A total of 111 chipped tools was found throughout the formation in three complexes. He estimated the oldest may date back as far as 75,000 years.
According to MacNeish, he found 3 pre-Clovis strata in the cave that he named, from oldest to youngest, the Orogrande, the McGregor, and the North Mesa.
As of 2004, the early dating of the discoveries at Pendejo Cave has been discounted by many archaeologists. Faunal remains in the cave had been dated to possibly as old as 55,000 years, but the manufacture and dating of the chipped stones and other alleged artifacts of human origin was disputed.
[Fiedel, Stuart F. (Autumn 2004) "Reviewed Works: Pendejo Cave", ''Journal of Anthropological Research'', Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 416-417. Downloaded from ]JSTOR
JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...
.; "Pendejo Cave", https://www.utep.edu/leb/pleistnm/sites/pendejocave.htm, accessed 9 Mar 2017
In 2015, William Farrand, in his review of MacNeish and Libby's 2004 book,
noted the abundance and integrity of the data as provided by the authors. According to Farrand, "it is difficult to avoid accepting the hypothesis of pre-Clovis Paleoamericans in the American Southwest prior to 37,000 or 55,000 B.P."
See also
*
Bluefish Caves
Bluefish Caves is an archaeological site in Yukon, Canada, located southwest of the Vuntut Gwichin community of Old Crow, from which a jaw bone of a Yukon horse has been radiocarbon dated to 24,000 years before present (BP). There are three smal ...
*
Early human migrations
Early human migrations are the earliest migrations and expansions of archaic and modern humans across continents. They are believed to have begun approximately 2 million years ago with the early expansions out of Africa by '' Homo erect ...
*
History of Mesoamerica (Paleo-Indian)
In the History of Mesoamerica, the stage known as the Paleo-Indian period (or alternatively, the Lithic stage) is the era in the scheme of Mesoamerican chronology which begins with the very first indications of human habitation within the Mes ...
*
Origins of Paleoindians
The settlement of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowerin ...
*
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that possible visits to the Americas, possible interactions with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from Africa, Asia, Europe, ...
References
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20070711190713/http://www.utep.edu/leb/paleo/site62.htm
{{Authority control
Archaeological sites in New Mexico
Caves of New Mexico
Landforms of Otero County, New Mexico
Pre-Columbian era
History of indigenous peoples of the Americas
Human migration
History of the Americas
Origin hypotheses of ethnic groups
Paleo-Indian period
Pre-Clovis archaeological sites in the Americas