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Charlie Sheldon wrote: ↑01 Nov 2017, 11:25 I made every effort to insure that all the historical and scientific evidence my characters discussed in Strong Heart was based in fact, with a scientific basis. So, for example, Myra's reference to Huyetalco in Mexico is real. Similarly the Manis mastadon spearpoint and bone is real, you can see it in the museum in Sequim, 13,800 years old, which is 1800 years older than Clovis. Javier is correct - all evidence from the time of great ice along the coast is probably buried beneath rising seas. There are enormous arguments about old sites in the Americas, most of them not accepted at the current time for a variety of reasons, mostly sound I think. However, there is a site in the Yukon that has dated to 24,000 years old, seriously, and just recently a cut mastadon bone was found in California that seems to be 130,000 years old, perhaps supporting the Huyetalco thesis that the Mexican site might have been that old as well. Point being, we know a lot yet we know very little, and any theory we have is the truth today unless and until it is supplanted by another theory. I always said to myself while I was watching this tale appear in 2013-2014 that the Good Lord has a wicked sense of humor and within a few years of the book being published there will be a find in the Americas supporting my thesis, which from a selfish perspective will help me sell copies, make me look briliiant, and begin a raging debate about such a huge shift in human origins thinking. That hasn't happened. Yet .But maybe the Yukon site is the start, or the cut mastadon bone in San Diego (it will take years to confirm or fully debunk this recent find). The way it seems changing theories work, it seems to me, is that when first offered all those who have made their careers on finding or supporting the previous theory rise up and defend their thesis to the death (almost literally), such that any new find, to change things, has to be incontrovertible, unmistakable, and huge. For those of you who read Strong Heart, the Marking Place would be such a site, perhaps - that is, assuming you believe Sarah's journey was a real journey to a real place, and not a dream.....