Scientists have discovered that humans arrived in North America at least 1,000 years earlier than previously thought:
Scientists have found and dated the oldest human remnants ever uncovered in the Americas — a discovery that places people genetically similar to Native Americans in Oregon more than 14,000 years ago and 1,000 years earlier than previous estimates.
Using radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis, an international team concluded that fossilized feces found five feet below the surface of an arid cave are significantly older than any previous human remains unearthed in the Americas.
The samples were discovered near a crude dart or spear tip chiseled from obsidian, as well as bones of horses and camels that were then common in the region. The researchers described their finding as a “smoking gun” in the long-running debate over when and where humans first inhabited the New World.
“What’s so exciting here is that we have cells from real people, their DNA, rather than samples of their work or technologies,” said Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon, who oversaw the dig. “And we have them on the Oregon landscape 1,000 years before what used to be the earliest samples of human remains in the Americas.”
The discovery, published yesterday in the online edition of the journal Science, is a blow to the widely held theory that the Clovis culture — named after a site in New Mexico where its distinct artifacts and fluted spearheads were first identified in the 1930s — was the first human presence in North America. Jenkins said that while the human DNA found in Oregon could be from ancestors of the Clovis culture, none of the distinctive Clovis technology has been found in the region.
Shhh, nobody tell the creationists.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Shhh, nobody tell the climate change crowd that real science is fluid and changes with the available evidence.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Hey JB,
The difference is that this discovery does not contradict any previous science. Furthermore, it’s a matter of pure discovery, not theory or modeling or statistics.
Go ahead, no one cares what you anti-science people think. You’re in such a small minority of people your opinion no longer matters.