Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans lived in North America At least 30,000 years ago, about 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists have said.
Two studies published in the journal Nature on Wednesday said researchers had found artifacts, including some 1,900 stone tools, showing the human occupation of the Chiquihuite cave at high altitude over a period of approximately 20,000 years, spanning 12,500 years ago. years until at least 31,000 years ago.
“Our results provide new evidence of the antiquity of humans in the Americas,” Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas and lead author of one of the studies, told the AFP news agency.
“There are only a few artifacts and a couple of dates in that range,” he said, referring to radiocarbon dating results that locate the oldest samples between 33,000 and 31,000 years ago. “However, the presence is there.”
No traces of human bone or DNA were found at the site, but the study concluded that “Humans are likely to use this site relatively constantly, perhaps in recurring seasonal episodes that are part of larger migration cycles.”
In the second study, evidence from 42 sites around North America indicated a human presence that dates back to at least a time called the Ultimate Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets covered much of the continent, approximately 26,000 to 19,000 years ago and immediately thereafter.
The research also implicated humans in the extinction of many large Ice Age mammals, such as mammoths and camels.
#PressINAH 🗞️
They discover human evidence of 30,000 years old in the Cueva del Chiquihuite, Zacatecas.
More details 👉 https://t.co/aM6Yxcd1tf pic.twitter.com/6Bcygtsvrd
– INAHmx (@INAHmx) July 22, 2020
Translation: [Researchers] He discovered 30,000-year-old human evidence in the Chiquihuite cave, Zacatecas, the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico wrote on Twitter.
Clovis culture
Until recently, the widely accepted story was that the first humans to set foot in the Americas crossed a land bridge from present-day Russia to Alaska some 13,500 years ago, and moved south through a corridor between two massive ice sheets.
Archaeological evidence, which includes spearheads specially designed to kill mammoths and other prehistoric megafaunas, suggested that this founding population, known as the Clovis Culture, spread across North America, giving rise to different Native American populations.
But the first Clovis model has crumbled in the past 20 years with the discovery of several ancient human settlements dating back 2,000 or 3,000 years earlier.
Recent findings also suggest that low numbers of people entered the continent earlier than previously understood, some perhaps by boat along a Pacific coastal route rather than crossing the land bridge, and some died leaving no descendants. .
Archaeological scientist Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, from the University of Oxford in England and the University of New South Wales in Australia, said that the populations of the continent expanded significantly from about 14,700 years ago.
“These are paradigm-changing results that shape our understanding of the initial dispersal of modern humans in the Americas,” added Becerra-Valdivia.
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