Cave discoveries may double the time people lived in the Americas

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According to a paper published today in the journal Nature, Chiquihuite Cave may contain evidence of human occupation that places people in North America around 30,000 years ago—roughly twice as early as most current estimates for when the first humans arrived on the continent.

The question of when people first arrived in the Americas has been debated for more than a century. For much of that time the reigning theory put the arrival around 13,500 years ago. But archaeologists are now exploring sites that keep pushing the date farther back, including some who have reported finding signs of human presence beyond 30,000 years ago. The evidence supporting those claims is hotly contested, and this latest discovery is already stirring more controversy.

Excavating the sloping floor of the cave to a depth of 10 feet, excavation director and the paper’s lead author Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist with the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, and his fellow researchers have unearthed thousands of stones they identified as blades, projectile points, and flakes produced by the tool-making process.

The team extracted ancient pollen and DNA from the sediments and found signs that the cave’s desolate environs once were much cooler, greener, and wetter.

At a deep level of the excavation reliably dated to 28,000 years ago, they discovered evidence of Douglas fir, a tree no longer native to Mexico, as well as a piece of stone the researchers believe to be a human-crafted blade.

Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/07/surprise-chiquihuite-cave-discovery-mexico-double-peopling-americas/

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