EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF HUMANS TO AMERICA

EARLY MODERN HUMANS REACH THE AMERICAS

13,000-year-old footprint in British Columbia

For decades, it was thought the first humans to arrive in the Americas came across the Bering Land Bridge 13,000 years ago. New evidence has changed that scenario. The first people to arrive in the Americas may have arrived around the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest part of the last ice age (about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago)

Genetic studies suggest that the first people to arrive in the Americas descended from an ancestral group of Ancient North Siberians and East Asians that mingled around 20,000 to 23,000 years ago. They crossed the Bering Land Bridge sometime between then and 15,500 years ago, David Meltzer, an archaeologist and professor of prehistory at Southern Methodist University in Dallas told Live Science. [Source: Laura Geggel, Live Science, October 9, 2023]

According to Live Science: But some archaeological sites hint that people may have reached the Americas far earlier than that. For instance, there are fossilized human footprints in White Sands National Park in New Mexico that may date to 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. That would mean humans arrived in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred between about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago, when ice sheets covered much of what is now Alaska, Canada and the northern U.S. Other, more equivocal data suggest the first people arrived in the Western Hemisphere by 25,000 or even 31,500, years ago. If these dates can be confirmed, they would paint a much more complex picture of how and when humans reached the Americas.

Sarah Kaplan wrote in the Washington Post: “For decades paleontologists believed that an ancient culture known as Clovis took a north-south route through the gap between the glaciers, starting in Alaska and then making their way into the previously uninhabited expanse of the Americas. But recent discoveries of settlements far older than that ice-free corridor have challenged that theory, suggesting that people arrived here before the route was navigable.” [Source: Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, June 7, 2016]

Glenn Hodges wrote in National Geographic: ““Given that Asia and North America were connected by a broad landmass called Beringia during the last ice age and that the first Americans appeared to be mobile big-game hunters, it was easy to conclude that they’d followed mammoths and other prey out of Asia, across Beringia, and then south through an open corridor between two massive Canadian ice sheets. And given that there was no convincing evidence for human occupation predating the Clovis hunters, a new orthodoxy developed: They had been the first Americans. Case closed. [Source: Glenn Hodges, National Geographic, January 2015 /~]

“That all changed in 1997 when a team of high-profile archaeologists visited a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde. There Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University claimed to have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to more than 14,000 years ago—a thousand years before the Clovis hunters appeared in North America. Like all pre-Clovis claims, this one was controversial, and Dillehay was even accused of planting artifacts and fabricating data. But after reviewing the evidence, the expert team concluded it was solid, and the story of the peopling of the Americas was thrown wide open. /~\

Websites and Resources on Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Books: Books: "First Peoples in a New World, 2nd Edition" by David Meltzer, an archaeologist and professor of prehistory in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, (Cambridge University Press, 2021); "Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas" by Jennifer Raff, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas (Twelve, 2022); "The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory" by Thomas D. Dillehay ( Basic Books, 2000 Dated)

Earliest Evidence of Modern Humans in America

The oldest controversial human site in South America and the Americas period is Pedra Furada Brazil. The site has been dated to 41,000–56,000 years before present by radio carbon dating charcoal from the oldest layers. There are doubts about whether humans are indeed responsible for the tools and other purported human things found there. There are also issues with the dating. [Source: Wikipedia +]

The earliest purported evidence of humans in Canada — and one of the earliest for the Americas — is Bluefish Caves, which has been dated at 25,000–40,000 years before present. Human-worked mammoth bone flakes found at Bluefish Caves, Yukon, are much older than the stone tools and animal remains at Haida Gwaii in British Columbia (10,000-12,000 before present).

The oldest evidence of modern humans in the continental United States is a set of human footprints found at Lake Otero in White Sands National Park ,New Mexico that may date to 23,000 years ago. Stone, bone, and wood artifacts and animal and plant remains dating to 16,000 years ago in Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Earlier claims have been made, but not corroborated, for 50,000 year old sites such as Topper, South Carolina.)

Rimrock Draw Rockshelter in Oregon has been dated 18,250 years old was described at “oldest human settlement in America in 2023. Before that Cooper’s Ferry, Idaho, dated to be 16,000 years had previously thought to be the earliest inhabited site. Other very old sites in the lower 48 U.S. states include, 13,000-year-old Arlington Springs site on Santa Rosa Island in California. It was discovered in 1959. When sea levels were lower the four northern Channel Islands of California comprised one island, Santa Rosae.

The oldest verified site in South America is Monte Verde Chile. It has been dated to 18,500-14,800 years before present by carbon dating of remains from the site. Pikimachay in Peru has been dated to 14,000 years ago by dating stone and bone artifacts found in a cave of the Ayacucho comple. El Abra in the Amazon region of Colombia has been dated to 12,500 years ago by dating stone, bone and charcoal artifacts. Piedra Museo in Argentina has been been dated to 11,000 years ago. Spear heads and human fossils were found there.

There are dozens of other sites, although some of the older ones are controversial. For example, a site in Brazil, was said to giant sloth bones that had been modified by humans at least 25,000 years ago, but it turns the narrow holes in the bones could have occurred naturally.50,000-year-old stone tools at Pedra Furada in Brazil may have actually been made by capuchin monkeys, a 2022 study in the journal The Holocene found. [Source: Laura Geggel, Live Science, October 9, 2023]

In 2020, archaeologists working at Chiquihuite Cave in the Astillero Mountains of central Mexico found about 1,900 stone artifacts. Radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating of the objects suggested that humans might have occupied the area 31,000 to 33,000 years ago. However, there are problems with the claims, Matthew Des Lauriers, an archaeologist at California State University, San Bernardino, told Live Science. Even the scientists who excavated the site noted that others might argue that the oldest stone objects discovered there are not of human origin but are merely "geofacts," or normal rocks that look artificial. A 2021 study from an independent group indeed made that argument. [Source: Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, August 13, 2023]

Bluefish Caves: 24,000-Year-Old Yukon Site, Oldest Human Site in the Americas?

Clovis point

Bluefish Caves is a network of three small cavities overlooking the Bluefish River in Canada's northwestern Yukon Territory, just over the Alaska border, north of the Arctic Circle, and about 250 kilometers south of the Arctic Sea. The site was first discovered during an air survey in 1975. A 10-year-long excavation project began there in 1977 and lasted about decade. Archaeologists discovered a small number of tools and 36,000 mammal bones — including from mammoths and extinct horses — some of which had cut marks and were later dated to be 24,800 years old. Based on bone fragments with cut marks, scientists who excavated the site claimed it 24,800 years old, or even older, far older than most of the other evidence suggested. Many experts remain skeptical of those results, as well as of those from a 2021 study that dated several long-debated flakes and fragments of mammoth bone to 28,000 years ago. [Source: Sascha Pare, Live Science, October 9, 2023]

The dating of human footprints at White Sands National Park, in southern New Mexico, to 23,000 to 21,000 years, and the declaration that this is the earliest "unequivocal evidence" of people in the Americas, makes the Bluefish Caves dating seem less improbable than it did in the past when it was though the first Americans came over around 16,000 years ago.

White Sands 23,000-21,000 Year-Old Human Footprints

The oldest evidence of modern humans in the continental United States is a set of human footprints found at Lake Otero in White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico that may date to 23,000 years ago. These footprints date to before the peak of the ice age about 20,000 years ago. Some archaeologists question the dates, casting doubts on dating methods and view evidence for human presence circumstantial and would prefer to see directly dated skeletons or genetics to confirm these dates. [Source: Wikipedia, Live Science]

White Sands has the world’s largest collection of fossilized Ice Age footprints, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. By comparison, Laetoli, the Tanzanian site with the world’s oldest-known hominin footprints, extends about 88 feet and contains fewer than 100 tracks. No one knows who the early human trackmakers were or whether they were genetically related to Native groups in the region today,

The White Sands footprints have been described as the earliest "unequivocal evidence" of people in the Americas. The footprints are still visible thanks to a megadrought that lowered the water levels and dried-up lake called Lake Otero, exposing swampy ground that preserved tracks left by humans and animals. [Source: Sascha Pare, Live Science, October 9, 2023]

Up until the early 2010s it was widely thought that humans didn’t arrive in North America closer until 13,500 – 16,000 years ago. The White Sands footprints and other finds with later dates have largely debunked that. The 23,000 year old date for the foot prints was arrived at by dating sediments above and below the footprints. In these sediments were ancient grass seeds (Ruppia cirrhosa) which were analyzed using radiocarbon dating, which yielded calibrated dates of 22,860 years ago (∓320 years) and 21,130 years ago (∓250 years). [Source: National Park Service]

Clovis People and Clovis Theory

Guy Gugliotta wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: For decades the most compelling evidence for the standard view that first people arrived in America around 13,000 to 14,000 years ago consisted of distinctive, exquisitely crafted, grooved bifacial projectile points, called “Clovis points” after the New Mexico town near where they were first discovered in 1929. With the aid of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s, archaeologists determined that the Clovis sites were 13,500 years old. This came as little surprise, for the first Clovis points were found in ancient campsites along with the remains of mammoth and ice age bison, creatures that researchers knew had died out thousands of years ago. But the discovery dramatically undermined the prevailing wisdom that human beings and these ice age “megafauna” did not exist in America at the same time. Scholars flocked to New Mexico to see for themselves. [Source: Guy Gugliotta, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013 /||]

Spreading homo sapiens

“The idea that the Clovis people, as they came to be known, were the first Americans quickly won over the research community. “The evidence was unequivocal,” said Ted Goebel, a colleague of Waters at the Center for the Study of the First Americans. Clovis sites, it turned out, were spread all over the continent, and “there was a clear association of the fauna with hundreds, if not thousands, of artifacts,” Goebel said. “Again and again it was the full picture.” /||\

“Furthermore, the earliest Clovis dates corresponded roughly to the right geological moment—after the ice age warming, before the great cold snap. The northern ice had receded far enough so incoming settlers could curl around to the eastern slope of North America’s coastal mountains and hike south along an ice-free corridor between the cordilleran mountain glaciers to the west and the huge Laurentide ice sheet that swaddled much of Canada to the east. “It was a very nice package, and that’s what sealed the deal,” Goebel said. “Clovis as the first Americans became the standard, and it’s really a high bar.” /||\

“When they reached the temperate prairies, the migrants found an environment far different from what we know today—both fantastic and terrifying. There were mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, camels, bison, lions, saber-toothed cats, cheetahs, dire wolves weighing 150 pounds, eight-foot beavers and short-faced bears that stood more than six feet tall on all fours and weighed 1,800 pounds. Clovis points, finely made and strong, were well suited for hunting large animals. /||\

“The hunters spread through the United States and Mexico, the story went, pursuing prey until too few animals remained to support them in the last cold snap. Radiocarbon dates show that most of the megafauna became extinct around 12,700 years ago. The Clovis points disappeared then as well, perhaps because there were no longer any large animals to hunt. The Clovis theory, over time, acquired the force of dogma. “We all learned it as undergraduates,” Waters recalled. Any artifacts that scholars said came before Clovis, or competing theories that cast doubt on the Clovis-first idea, were ridiculed by the archaeological establishment, discredited as bad science or ignored.” /||\

Monte Verde, Chile

In the 1990s. artifacts reliably dated to between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago were found in bogs near Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt, in the Los Lagos region of southern Chile, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Santiago. Since then artifacts and remains have been dated to 18,500-14,800 years before present by carbon dating . Since these artifacts were found so far from the Bering Strait, the route believed to have been taken by the first Americans, scientists believe that first people to migrate out of Asia arrived in Alaska perhaps 20,000 years ago. If they arrived later than that made their way down the west coast of the Americas to Chile relatively fast. [Source: Rick Gore, National Geographic, October, 1997]

The Monte Verde dating has held up against arguments that perhaps floods moved the artifacts into older sediments or the sediments were contaminated by eroded ash from volcanic eruptions. The oldest previously known sights where identified with the Clovis people, a group of early Americans named after a site in New Mexico. Numerous 12,000-year-old Clovis sites have been found on both the eastern and western sides of North America. Beautifully- crafted leaf-shape projectile points, blades and burins, dating from 13,000 to 9,000 B.C. , have been found in Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Idaho and Nevada.

Monte Verde

David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University told National Geographic, "How could people possibly have raced down from Alaska in a few hundred years? They were pioneering a landscape that was becoming increasingly unfamiliar as they moved south. They had to find water and figure out which plants and animals were edible, useful, harmful or even fatal. They had to cross formidable barriers and cope with new diseases. And they had to do all this while raising families on a vast continent devoid of other people. All of that takes time." Geneticists confirm this belief by pointing out that the languages and genetic material of native Americans is too diverse to be only 12,000 years old.

Shock of Mont Verde

Guy Gugliotta wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “Take South America. In the late 1970s, the U.S. archaeologist Tom D. Dillehay and his Chilean colleagues began excavating what appeared to be an ancient settlement on a creek bank at Monte Verde, in southern Chile. Radiocarbon readings on organic material collected from the ruins of a large tent-like structure showed that the site was 14,800 years old, predating Clovis finds by more than 1,000 years. Significantly, though, the researchers found no Clovis points. That posed a challenge: either Clovis hunters went to South America without their trademark weapons (highly unlikely) or people settled in South America even before the Clovis people arrived. [Source: Guy Gugliotta, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013 /||]

“There must have been “people somewhere in the Americas 15,000 or 16,000 years ago, or perhaps as long as 18,000 years ago,” said Dillehay, now at Vanderbilt University. “Of the researchers working sites that seemed to precede Clovis people, Dillehay was singled out for special criticism. He was all but ostracized by Clovis advocates for years. When he was invited to meetings, speakers stood up to denounce Monte Verde. “It’s not fun when people write to your dean and try to get you fired,” he recalled. “And then your grad students try to get jobs and they can’t get jobs.” /||\

“The Monte Verde site gained wider acceptance after a panel of well-known archaeologists visited it in 1997 and reached a consensus. Dillehay was pleased that the panel had verified the integrity of his team’s work, “but it was a small group of people,” he said, meaning others in the profession continued to harbor doubts. /||\

“Two years later, an independent archaeologist, Stuart Fiedel, denounced Monte Verde’s authenticity in Scientific American Discovering Archaeology. Dillehay “fails to provide even the most basic” information about the locations of “key artifacts” at Monte Verde, Fiedel wrote. “Unless and until numerous discrepancies in the final report are convincingly clarified, this site should not be construed as conclusive proof of a pre-Clovis occupation in South America.” /||\

“Dillehay rebuffs the criticisms: “More than 1,500 pages were published on Monte Verde, which is five times more than were ever written on any other site in the Americas, including Clovis. All of the artifacts came from the same surface covered by the peat bog and they all made sense in terms of the site’s activities. The vast majority are flaked pebble tools, typical of South American unifacial technologies. North Americans impose their evaluations on South America without even knowing the data down south.” He went on, “Now the field has moved on, and there are numerous pre-Clovis sites that have come to the forefront.”“/||\

Solutrean Hypothesis: the First Americans were Europeans?

The Solutrean hypothesis claims that the earliest human migration to the Americas took place from Europe, during the Last Glacial Maximum. This hypothesis contrasts with the mainstream view that the North American continent was first reached after the Last Glacial Maximum, by people from North Asia, either by the Bering land bridge (i.e. Beringia), or by maritime travel along the Pacific coast, or by both. [Source: Wikipedia +]

According to the Solutrean hypothesis, people of the European Solutrean culture, 21,000 to 17,000 years ago migrated to North America by boat along the pack ice of the North Atlantic Ocean. They brought their methods of making stone tools with them and provided the basis for the later (c. 13,000 years ago) Clovis technology that spread throughout North America. The hypothesis is based on similarities between European Solutrean and Clovis lithic technologies. Supporters of the Solutrean hypothesis refer to recent archaeological finds such as those at Cactus Hill in Virginia, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, and Miles Point in Maryland as evidence of a transitional phase between Solutrean lithic technology and what later became Clovis technology. +

Originally proposed in the 1970s, the theory has received some support in the 2010s, notably by Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution and Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter. Guy Gugliotta wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: In their 2012 book Across Atlantic Ice, they suggest that these Europeans reached the New World more than 20,000 years ago, settled in the eastern United States, developed the Clovis technology over several thousand years, then spread across the continent. [Source: Guy Gugliotta, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013 /||]

“This theory is based partly on similarities between Clovis points and finely crafted “laurel leaf” points from Europe’s Solutrean culture, which flourished in southwestern France and northern Spain between 24,000 and 17,000 years ago. Stanford and Bradley argue that artifacts found at Page-Ladson, as well as other pre-Clovis sites, including the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in western Pennsylvania and the sand dunes of Cactus Hill in southeastern Virginia, have similarities to Solutrean technologies. /||\

“The Solutreans, whose territory on the European continent was apparently rather compact, may have been forced by encroaching glaciers and extreme cold to cluster on the Atlantic coast. At some point, Stanford and Bradley say, the stresses of overpopulation may have forced some Solutreans to escape by sea. They headed north and west beneath the Atlantic ice sheet to nudge into North America at the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. /||\

Brian Vastag wrote in the Washington Post: “Little is known about the Solutrean people. They lived in Spain, Portugal and southern France beginning about 25,000 years ago. No skeletons have been found, so no DNA is available to study. But the Solutreans did leave behind rock art, which showed a diamond-shaped flat fish in delicate black etchings. It looks like a halibut. A seal also appears, an arrow-headed line stabbing through it. [Source:Brian Vastag, Washington Post, February 29, 2012]

Pedra Furada

Pedra Furada — 50,000 Year Old Site in Brazil?

Pedra Furada (meaning “Pierced Rock” in Portuguese) refer to collection of over 800 archaeological sites, including some rock shelters, located in Serra da Capivara National Park, in Brazil's Piauí state. It is one of the most controversial archaeological sites in the Americas. Cave paintings there site indicate humans were there at some point in prehistory but the paintings are not that old and some of the early evidence of humans has been doubted.[Source: Sascha Pare, Live Science, October 9, 2023]

Excavations at Pedra Furada in the 1970s and 1980s uncovered stone artifacts and hearths that suggested the site was occupied by humans 32,000 years ago and even as far back as 50,000 years ago. But a 2022 study found that capuchin monkeys living in the national park are capable of creating objects out of stone that closely resemble those found at Pedra Furada. This finding — along with a lack of firm evidence of human presence, such as hearths or food remains — suggests the site was not populated by humans until much later.

The oldest of hundreds of rock paintings at Pedra Furada have been dated from about 11,000 years ago. Charcoal from very ancient fires and stone shards that may be interpreted as tools suggest the possibility of a human presence prior to the arrival of Clovis people in North America 13,000 years ago. Brazilian archaeologist Niède Guidon, the main source of the claims told the New York Times that occupation of the Americas could go back 100,000 years and the first settlers “might have come not overland from Asia but by boat from Africa.” She told The Guardian: "I don't have any doubt that the oldest traces of humans yet discovered are here in Brazil.....I think it's wrong that everyone came running across Bering chasing mammoths - that's infantile. I think they also came along the seas. I don't see why they couldn't have come across the Atlantic." [Source: The Guardian, Wikipedia +]

David Meltzer, of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas asks "...if we have [pre-Clovis] humans in South America, then by golly, why don't we have them in North America too?" Responding to this Guidon suggested a sea voyage across the Atlantic as a potential route for the first migration.

Humans in the Arctic 45,000 Years Ago?

Ann Gibbons wrote in Science: “In August of 2012, an 11-year-old boy made a gruesome discovery in a frozen bluff overlooking the Arctic Ocean. While exploring the foggy coast of Yenisei Bay, about 2000 kilometers south of the North Pole, he came upon the leg bones of a woolly mammoth eroding out of frozen sediments. Scientists excavating the well-preserved creature determined that it had been killed by humans: Its eye sockets, ribs, and jaw had been battered, apparently by spears, and one spear-point had left a dent in its cheekbone—perhaps a missed blow aimed at the base of its trunk. [Source: Ann Gibbons, Science, January 14, 2016 ^]

Pedra Furada

“When they dated the remains, the researchers got another surprise: The mammoth died 45,000 years ago. That means that humans lived in the Arctic more than 10,000 years earlier than scientists believed, according to a new study. The find suggests that even at this early stage, humans were traversing the most frigid parts of the globe and had the adaptive ability to migrate almost everywhere. ^

“Most researchers had long thought that big-game hunters, who left a trail of stone tools around the Arctic 12,500 years ago, were the first to reach the Arctic Circle. These cold-adapted hunters apparently traversed Siberia and the Bering Straits at least 15,000 years ago (and new dates suggest humans may have been in the Americas as early as 18,500 years ago). But in 2004, researchers pushed that date further back in time when they discovered beads and stone and bone tools dated to as much as 35,000 years old at several sites in the Ural Mountains of far northeastern Europe and in northern Siberia; they also found the butchered carcasses of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, and other animals. The Russian boy’s discovery—of the best-preserved mammoth found in a century—pushes back those dates by another 10,000 years. A team led by archaeologist Alexei Tikhonov excavated the mammoth and dubbed it “Zhenya,” for the child, Evgeniy Solinder, whose nickname was Zhenya. ^

“The big surprise, though, is the age. Radiocarbon dates on the collagen from the mammoth’s tibia bone, as well as from hair and muscle tissue, produce a direct date of 45,000 years, the team reports online today in Science. This fits with dating of the layer of sediments above the carcass, which suggest it was older than 40,000 years. If correct, this means the mammoth was alive during the heyday of woolly mammoths 42,000 to 44,000 years ago when they roamed the vast open grasslands of the northern steppe of the Siberian Arctic, Pitulko says. Researchers also have dated a thighbone of a modern human to 45,000 years at Ust-Ishim in Siberia, although that was found south of the Arctic at a latitude of 57° north, a bit north (and east) of Moscow. “The dating is compelling. It’s likely older than 40,000,” says Douglas Kennett, an environmental archaeologist who is co-director of the Pennsylvania State University, University Park’s accelerator mass spectrometry facility. However, he would like the Russian team to report the method used to rule out contamination of the bone collagen for dating—and confirmation of the dates on the bone by another lab, because the date is so critical for the significance of this discovery. ^

“Mammoths and other large animals, such as woolly rhinoceros and reindeer, may have been the magnet that drew humans to the Far North. “Mammoth hunting was an important part of survival strategy, not only in terms of food, but in terms of important raw materials—tusks, ivory that they desperately needed to manufacture hunting equipment,” Pitulko says. The presence of humans in the Arctic this early also suggests they had the adaptive ability to make tools, warm clothes, and temporary shelters that allowed them to live in the frigid north earlier than thought. They had to adapt to the cold to traverse Siberia and Beringia on their way to the Bering Strait’s land bridge, which they crossed to enter the Americas. “Surviving at those latitudes requires highly specialized technology and extreme cooperation,” Marean agrees. That implies that these were modern humans, rather than Neandertals or other early members of the human family. “If these hunters could survive in the Arctic Circle 45,000 years ago, they could have lived virtually anywhere on Earth,” says Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University, College Station.” ^

The find also indicates that early Siberians were 4,660 kilometers (2,895 miles) from what was then a land bridge between modern Russia and Alaska. According to the Siberian Times: “A long distance, for sure, but far from insurmountable, opening the possibility that Stone Age Siberians colonised the Americas at this early point.” [Source: Anna Liesowska siberiantimes.com May 30, 2016]

Neanderthals in California, 130,000 Years Ago?

In 2017, scientists made the startling claim that the first known Americans arrived more than 115,000 years than they earlier thought — and maybe they were Neanderthals. Associated Press reported: “Researchers say a site in Southern California shows evidence of humanlike behavior from about 130,000 years ago, when bones and teeth of an elephantlike mastodon were evidently smashed with rocks. [Source: Associated Press, April 26, 2017~||~]

“The earlier date means the bone-smashers were not necessarily members of our own species, Homo sapiens. The researchers speculate that these early Californians could have instead been species known only from fossils in Europe, Africa and Asia: Neanderthals, a little-known group called Denisovans, or another human forerunner named Homo erectus. “The very honest answer is, we don’t know,” said Steven Holen, lead author of the paper and director of the nonprofit Center for American Paleolithic Research in Hot Springs, South Dakota. No remains of any individuals were found. ~||~

“Whoever they were, they could have arrived by land or sea. They might have come from Asia via the Beringea land bridge that used to connect Siberia to Alaska, or maybe come across by watercraft along the Beringea coast or across open water to North America, before turning southward to California, Holen said in a telephone interview. Holen and others presented their evidence in a paper released by the journal Nature . Not surprisingly, the report was met by skepticism from other experts who don’t think there is enough proof. The research dates back to the winter of 1992-3. The site was unearthed during a routine dig by researchers during a freeway expansion project in San Diego. Analysis of the find was delayed to assemble the right expertise, said Tom Demere, curator of paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum, another author of the paper. ~||~

“The Nature analysis focuses on remains from a single mastodon, and five stones found nearby. The mastodon’s bones and teeth were evidently placed on two stones used as anvils and smashed with three stone hammers, to get at nutritious marrow and create raw material for tools. Patterns of damage on the limb bones looked like what happened in experiments when elephant bones were smashed with rocks. And the bones and stones were found in two areas, each roughly centered on what’s thought to be an anvil. The stones measured about 8 inches (20 centimeters) to 12 inches (30 centimeters) long and weighed up to 32 pounds (14.5 kilograms). They weren’t hand-crafted tools, Demere said. The users evidently found them and brought them to the site. The excavation also found a mastodon tusk in a vertical position, extending down into older layers, which may indicate it had been jammed into the ground as a marker or to create a platform, Demere said. The fate of the visitors is not clear. Maybe they died out without leaving any descendants, he said. ~||~

“Experts not connected with the study provided a range of reactions. “If the results stand up to further scrutiny, this does indeed change everything we thought we knew,” said Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. Neanderthals and Denisovans are the most likely identities of the visitors, he said. But “many of us will want to see supporting evidence of this ancient occupation from other sites, before we abandon the conventional model of a first arrival by modern humans within the last 15,000 years,” he wrote in an email. Erella Hovers of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University in Tempe, who wrote a commentary accompanying the work, said in an email that the archaeological interpretation seemed convincing. Some other experts said the age estimate appears sound. ~||~

“But some were skeptical that the rocks were really used as tools. Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona in Tucson said the paper shows the bones could have been broken the way the authors assert, but they haven’t demonstrated that’s the only way. Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, said he doesn’t reject the paper’s claims outright, but he finds the evidence “not yet solid.” For one thing, the dig turned up no basic stone cutting tools or evidence of butchery or the use of fire, as one might expect from Homo sapiens or our close evolutionary relatives.” ~||~

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except British Columbia footprints, Scientific American

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024