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New Signs In Brazil That Humans Landed In Americas Long Before We Thought

Prehistoric painting in Serra de Capivara National Park
Prehistoric painting in Serra de Capivara National Park
Fernando Tadeu Moraes

PIAUÍ - A scientific article by French and Brazilian researchers brings major new findings to the discussion on the date humans arrived to the American continent. It analyzed three archeological sites in Piauí, in northeastern Brazil, and shows evidence that the region was inhabited by humans 22,000 years ago.

The researchers' discoveries, published in the "Journal of Archaeological Science", are yet other empirical evidence against the so-called "Clovis first" paradigm, the oldest theory of the occupation of the American continent.

Proposed by U.S. archeologists in the 1930s, the model affirms that the first inhabitants walked from Asia during the Ice Age some 13,000 years ago - when there was a land bridge between the two continents - and they spread through the Americas.

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Brazil's Serra da Capivara National Park - Photo: Otávio Nogueira

The excavations were carried out between 2008 and 2011 at Toca da Tira Peia, in the Serra da Capivara National Park, in Piauí, and 113 stone artifacts were retrieved from five layers of soil.

"We found tools made from materials that cannot be found nearby. So we believe they were chosen, brought, crafted and used by humans," says Gisele Felice, of the Federal University of Vale do São Francisco.

The authors of the article believe that this means humans lived in that part of the world at least 10,000 years before previously believed.

Translation by Thomas Muello

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Ideas

Populists With A Plan: Welcome To The Age Of Reactionism

Right-wing reaction to the globalized, liberal order is starting to look less dispersed and more systematic, like 20th-century political movements like socialism and communism.

Photo of Bolsonaro Supporters Storming Congress

Supporters of former Brazilian President Bolsonaro clash with mounted police in the capital.

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — In a 2018 text published in the International Studies Quarterly, academics Joseph MacKay and Christopher David La Roche asked why there was no "Reactionary International Theory." In December of that year, speaking with Crisis journal, I myself stressed that beyond Europe and the United States, international reactionism was taking root in Latin America. Then in 2019, "Reactionary Internationalism" and the philosophy of the New Right were the subjects of another paper by Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen.

As an emergent trend, the "reactionary international" is worth considering.

This international is comparable in scope to 20th-century currents like the Communist International, Socialist International and Christian Democrat International. While those were prominent in Europe, the new reaction has emerged most emblematically in Anglo-American countries and remains a solidly Western phenomenon. Its expressions in peripheral countries, eastern Europe or Latin America have effectively adopted its mainstream proposals.

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