Talk:Riwat

Datings

The article seems to be making exceptional claims that the site provides "evidence of Homo occupation that is the earliest outside Africa, dating back to 1.9 million years ago. The site was discovered in 1983". This is contrary to reliable sources. This source says that "the mearge collection of pebble tools alleged to be 1.9 million years old, discovered at Riwat, northern Pakistan are disputed, in part because they were not found in their original context", citing a good reliable source, The Palaeolithic Settlement of Asia, which says "The obvious limitations of the Riwat evidence are that the stone artefact assemblage is very small; there is no associated faunal material; and they were not found in their primary context."[1] Another source says "a claim being clarified by continuing research".

Another source[2] mentions Riwat as 1.8 million years old, but provides also number of other discoveries estimating them to be older than Riwat's, these datings (other than Riwat) are also backed by [3] and [4] says "In 1983, at Riwat, near Rawalpindi, a group of artefacts was found in a Siwalik deposit, which was subsequently dated by the Paleomagnetic method to 1.9 million years. Some stone artefacts were found in the Indian Siwaliks which have been dated to 2.5 millions years. Despite such discoveries, no fossils of either hominids or humans have been discovered so far." Capitals00 (talk) 04:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

There are definitely reliable sources that date the Riwat artefacts to c. 1.9 mya [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. But looking through recent reviews of hominid dispersals into Asia [12][13][14][15][16][17][18], including several by Robin Dennell (who excavated Riwat), I can't find any that call it the oldest evidence of Out of Africa. I think there are two reasons for that: one, there are sites that might be older (e.g. Pabbi Hills, another one of Dennell's), and lots that are roughly contemporaneous with it (e.g. Dmanisi, Ubeidiya); two, there are no fossils at Riwat and therefore the dating is indirect, based on geology, and debateable.

I think the best approach would be to outline the dating evidence ([19] looks like a good, recent source) and perhaps say something like "if correct, this date puts Riwat amongst the oldest known sites of human habitation outside of Africa". Given the error margins such old dates, it's impossible to be definitive about which is the oldest anyway. – Joe (talk) 20:45, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Dennell's dating seems disputed. See this review of this book. I'll try to download this tomorrow to see what it says. See also [20] [21] [[22] The fact that the artefacts weren't found in their context would have to be mentioned. The first link in my last sentence, IIRC, also discussed Pabbi Hills. Doug Weller talk 18:30, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Having done a bit more reading I don't think we should over-emphasize the scepticism of these dates. Their biggest critic seems to be Dennell himself, who both Costa and Baumer cite when they describe them as "controversial" or "disputed". On the other hand we have Chauhan:

Despite the still controversial nature of the Riwat and Pabbi Hills lithic evidence from northern Pakistan, it remains the best-studied evidence among all claims reviewed in this paper.

— https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CO5zfl460CEC&pg=PA159

Mishra:

The very early dates for artefacts from the Siwalik sediments have been ignored rather than rejected. The main reason for this is not just the ambiguity of the evidence, but that they do not fit with the current paradigm of human evolution. [...] In east Africa large amounts of stone flaking debris are found at most of the sites putting their origin from deliberate stone flaking beyond doubt. The early European sites also often have a low frequency of artefacts but the meticulous documentation and study of the sites has led to them being accepted as artefacts.

— http://www.jstor.org/stable/42931441

And Murray:

However, despite the robustness of this evidence, in practice it was offered very hesitantly. [...] Subsequent to the work of the British team, early dates from sites in China, Indonesia, Europe and Central Asia have been generally accepted. I think that the hesitancy which I sense was due to the fact that when the work was reported it challenged the idea that there was a large time gap between the earliest sites in Africa and the earliest sites elsewhere, and despite there being no really valid argument against accepting the evidence, these localities are still not widely cited in discussions of early sites outside of Africa. [I expect] that more such evidence will turn up with further research.

— https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=C6iHAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA84

– Joe (talk) 14:07, 30 September 2017 (UTC)