14,000-year-old campsite in Argentina adds to an archaeological mystery
14,000-year-old campsite in Argentina adds to an archaeological mystery
A glimpse of the last people on Earth to colonize a continent without humans.
Annalee Newitz - 9/28/2016, 2:58 PM
For more than a decade, evidence has been piling up that humans colonized the Americas thousands of years before the Clovis people. The Clovis, who are the early ancestors of today's Native Americans, left abundant evidence of their lives behind in the form of tools and graves. But the mysterious pre-Clovis humans, who likely arrived 17,000 to 15,000 years ago, have left only a few dozen sources of evidence for their existence across the Americas, mostly at campsites where they processed animals during hunting trips. Now a fresh examination of one such campsite, a 14,000-year-old hunter's rest stop outside the city of Tres Arroyos in Argentina, has given us a new understanding of how the pre-Clovis people might have lived.
Archaeologists are still uncertain how the pre-Clovis people arrived in the Americas. They came after the end of the ice age but at a time when glaciers and an icy, barren environment would still have blocked easy entrance into the Americas via Northern Canada. So it's extremely unlikely that they marched over a land bridge and into the Americas through the middle of the continent—most scientists believe they would have come via a coastal route, frequently using boats for transport. That would explain why many pre-Clovis sites are on the coast, on islands, or on rivers that meet the ocean.
These early settlers were hunter-gatherers who used stone tools for a wide range of activities, including hunting, butchery, scraping hides, preparing food, and making other tools out of bone and wood. Many of the pre-Clovis stone tools look fairly simple and were made by using one stone to flake pieces off the other, thus creating sharp edges. At the campsite in Argentina, known as the Arroyo Seco 2 site, archaeologists have found more than 50 such tools made from materials like chert and quartzite. They're scattered across an area that was once a grassy knoll above a deep lake, which is rich with thousands of animal bone fragments that have been carbon dated to as early as 14,000 years ago. There are even a couple-dozen human burials at the site, dated to a later period starting roughly 9,000 years ago. The spot has the characteristic look of a hunter's camp, used for processing animals, that was revisited seasonally for thousands of years.
Writing in PLoS One, the researchers describe a number of reasons why they believe a bunch of sharp-edged rocks and broken animal bones point to a 14,000-year-old human occupation of Argentina. First of all, there are far too many animal bones from a diversity of species grouped in one place for it to be accidental. Yes, there are some natural traps where we find massive numbers of prehistoric bones, but those are almost always in holes or depressions in the ground—and this area was on a rather high hill during the Pleistocene. Second, the stones aren't just sharp-edged in a way that suggests flaking; many also show signs of wear and tear from scraping hide. "A large majority of the flaked edges were used transversely on dry skin," the researchers write. "Consequently, it is likely that the skins were brought to the site in a state of intermediate processing." Also, most of the stone used for the tools, including quartzite and chert, can only be found over 110km from Arroyo Seco. So that piece of evidence also points to human hunter-gatherers carrying tools with them over great distances.
More:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/14000-year-old-campsite-in-argentina-adds-to-an-archaeological-mystery/
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Did humans conquer the Americas earlier than we thought? Bones and tools suggest we reached the tip of South America 14,000 years ago
By Abigail Beall For Mailonline
Published: 13:01 EST, 28 September 2016 | Updated: 02:43 EST, 29 September 2016
The original Americans came from Siberia in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age.
They travelled across a land bridge connecting Asia to North America, arriving around 16,000 years ago, before making their way south.
Now a new study shows Homo sapiens reached the southern cone of the Americas 14,000 years ago - in a find which could put a date on the final step in our colonization of the continent.
The researchers, led by Dr Gustavo Politis from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet) in Argentina, studied an archaeological site called Arroyo Seco 2.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3812063/Did-humans-conquer-Americas-earlier-thought-Bones-tools-suggest-reached-tip-South-America-14-000-years-ago.html#ixzz4LdfDdKcx
