Last week's inconherant rant

The environment affects so much of what we do and what we can do in in this world.  I think of many areas like archeology and other things that happened before the advent of record keeping, History.  

I have heard that there have been ideas about when North America was first settled.  The science says the best evidence was at the end of the last Glacial period, because that is where all the hard evidence comes from.  Archeological sites in places where the ice had just melted or in locations along the coastline where people lived.  But there have alway been people that have suggested that people were here before that time.  The evidence is second or third order significance.  There are no bones, but there are possible tool making sites.  The secondary and tertiary evidence is weak and should not be used as primary evidence, or even as weighty as primary evidence.  But, the locations they are looking are not the best places to look for primary evidence.  

People choose the best places to live as their primary living areas.  On the west Coast of North America, the people's who live there have done so far very long times, because the temperate weather and the plentiful and easy food supply.  But in the times that some people suggest people may have come to North America, there was an Ice Age, and the sea level was much lower than it is now.  The coastal prime real estate of 25k-100k before now is under water and we have no way presently to search for archeological sites.  So until we do, those sites will remain hidden and we won't know for sure.  Oh well.

On another note, we know for a fact that there was an asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs were roaming around and having the time of their lives and then wham!, play time was over.  That is what most people believe.  But the truth is a bit more cloudy.  It is interesting to look at the things that were happening at about the same time on this planet.  After millions of years of gymnosperms and ferns dominating the landscape, angiosperms – flowering plant, were making a final push for dominance.  Conifers and ferns vs Deciduous and grasses.  The new plants were more versatile and they produced secondary metabolites in addition to everything else.  Secondary metabolites are chemicals that have secondary affects, like poisons, THC, and other drug like affects.  It has been suggested that when the asteroid hit, dinosaurs were not having a great party, but were suffering from indigestion and minor food poisoning.  

It was also suggested that the world's climate had been changing for millions of years to that point.  More carbon dioxide had been leaving the air and the world was getting cooler.  There was a great deal of volcanism happening in India and this was also contributing to climate changing and cooling down.  When the asteroid hit, many species of dinosaur were already swaying and readying to die.  And then the asteroid hit.