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Early American Fecal Matter a Great Discovery
by
findingDulcinea Staff
New fossil evidence suggests that the first humans came to North America 14,000 years ago, more than 1,000 years before previously estimated.
30-Second Summary
The first humans in North America were thought to have crossed from Asia via the Bering land bridge, which joined Siberia to Alaska, about 13,000 years ago. But findings recently published have cast doubt on that hypothesis.
A Danish researcher experimenting with DNA extraction tested fossilized human feces found in caves in Oregon and found they were 14,000 years old.
The people who have long been thought of as the original North Americans formed the Clovis culture, named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, near which their artifacts were first discovered in the 1930s. Clovis artifacts have been found throughout the United States and Canada, but other archaeological sites in South America have stirred a debate about when people first came to the continent.
Other archaeologists, such as David Meltzer at Southern Methodist University, call the Oregon cave findings convincing.
“It's a much more compelling case than this odd-looking rock found next to that piece of charcoal. We know a human made this turd, whereas we don't know if that was a campfire,” he told the Archaeology journal.
A Danish researcher experimenting with DNA extraction tested fossilized human feces found in caves in Oregon and found they were 14,000 years old.
The people who have long been thought of as the original North Americans formed the Clovis culture, named after the town of Clovis, New Mexico, near which their artifacts were first discovered in the 1930s. Clovis artifacts have been found throughout the United States and Canada, but other archaeological sites in South America have stirred a debate about when people first came to the continent.
Other archaeologists, such as David Meltzer at Southern Methodist University, call the Oregon cave findings convincing.
“It's a much more compelling case than this odd-looking rock found next to that piece of charcoal. We know a human made this turd, whereas we don't know if that was a campfire,” he told the Archaeology journal.
Headline Links: ‘Human Traces Found to be Oldest in N. America’
Fossilized human feces found in an Oregon cave have been found to be more than 14,000 years old. The findings are significant because archaeologists had thought the earliest humans had come to North America 13,000 years ago. University of Oregon Professor Dennis Jenkins, the project’s supervisor, told the Post: “What's so exciting here is that we have cells from real people, their DNA, rather than samples of their work or technologies.”
Source: Washington Post
A Danish researcher, Eske Willerslev, asked Jenkins to test the feces for DNA. Jenkins agreed, but with some skepticism. The samples sat in storage for nearly two years before they were tested, and Willerslev found markers in the genes that have been connected to Native Americans. Independent carbon dating at two labs confirmed the samples’ ages.
Source: Archaeology
Reference: Pre-Clovis people, Bering land bridge and the Clovis culture
Evidence that people existed in the Western hemisphere before the Clovis group has been around for nearly a decade. In 1999, the Smithsonian published an article that said there is evidence people were in South America before the Clovis period. People might have arrived at the Americas by boat instead of crossing land between Alaska and Siberia.
Source: Smithsonian
Approximately 12,000 years ago, what is now Alaska and Russia were connected, and people followed animal herds from Asia to North America. During the Cold War, two islands, Big Diomede and Little Diomede, were territories of the USSR and the United States, respectively. Though the two islands had members of the same families on each, they had to stay separated.
Source: U.S. National Park Service
Examples of spear ends made in a distinctive design known as Clovis points have been found all around North America, according to the Manitoba Archaeological Society. The lack of additional artifacts in Manitoba and other areas suggests small groups of people followed mammoth herds long distances to hunt them.
Source: Manitoba Archaeological Society
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