Claims that challenged the model were treated as extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence — a reasonable standard in principle, but one that was sometimes applied with a selectivity that reflected the model’s hold on the field’s assumptions.

The consequence of this was that the actual human history of the Americas — the real story of when people arrived, how they lived, what technologies they used, and what landscapes they inhabited — was significantly delayed in its scientific reconstruction.

Sites like Manis, which produced genuine evidence in the late 1970s, languished in a state of scientific uncertainty for decades partly because the methodological tools to fully demonstrate their significance were not yet available, and partly because the institutional and intellectual framework of the field was slow to accommodate findings that challenged its foundational assumptions.

This is not a cynical observation about individual scientists.