Ah, thanks TL. I thought that's what you might be talking about. I won't sidetrack this thread with a detailed discussion - although if anyone is interested we can move it to a new topic. Suffice that the earliest confirmed dates of human presence in the Americas is less than 15,000 years ago (with some pre-Clovis sites still under investigation). The oldest (disputed) site in South America is Monte Verde, Chile, at 12,500 years ago. The "50,000" year old site at Pedra Furada in Brazil has been heavily disputed ever since Meneses Lage first dated her "firepit" at 30,000 years. Most recently, plasma extraction dating of the calcite veneer over one of the "36,000-43,000 year old" cave paintings shows a quite recent - and consistent - date of around 1200-3700 years. The "unamed scientists" your reference reported are proponents of the "ancient" Pedra Furada dates. There's a small group of them, led by Meneses Lage and Bahn who are trying to portray the controversy as a "North America vs the rest of the world" scientific neoimperialism. Funny that they ignore the French scientists like Renault-Miskovsky of the Laboratoire de Prhistoire du Muse National d'Histoire Naturelle who report a quite uncontroversial date of 7000-8500 years (she dated fossilized human excrement from the site - whatever works.
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As to the rest, I wouldn't expect you to retract. Your "200,000" year old "modern human" is pretty close to the 170-250 ky figures I've seen. Your correction of crash was on-target. Also, I agree with your assessment on "civilization" representing only a tiny fraction of our history - assuming you mean civlization to indicate "social organization larger than family group or clan".
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