Stone tools may place some of the first Americans in Idaho 16,500 years ago
Artifacts add to evidence that North America’s early settlers predated an inland, ice-free path
America’s first settlers may have coasted in. Northeast Asians traveled down North America’s Pacific coast and then eastward into the continent more than 1,500 years before an inland, ice-free corridor opened up, researchers say.
That conclusion, reported in the Aug. 30 Science, rests on discoveries at a site in western Idaho called Cooper’s Ferry. Stone tools excavated there point to repeated human visits between around 16,560 and 15,280 years ago, says a team led by archaeologist Loren Davis of Oregon State University in Corvallis.
Those tools look much like stone artifacts that were made around that time in what’s now Japan, Davis’ group says. Asian toolmakers could have reached Idaho only by first heading down the Pacific coast, the researchers contend, possibly by combining canoe travel with walking.
How North America’s first settlers arrived, and when, is a hotly debated topic. And the Idaho finds show no signs of cooling that conflict. One long-standing idea is that melting of massive ice sheets cleared a path from what’s now Alaska into the heart of North America by around 14,800 years ago. That possibly enabled people to reach Florida and South America a few hundred years later (SN: 8/8/18).
But some scientists have argued that colonizers from Asia arrived earlier, primarily traveling by canoe down the coast before moving inland. Evidence from Texas places people there roughly 15,000 years ago (SN: 10/24/18). And previous research has found evidence that an ice-free path along Alaska’s coast formed by around 17,000 years ago (SN: 5/30/18).
The Idaho tools lack the signature grooved bases of points made by well-known Clovis hunters, who arrived in the Americas around 13,250 years ago (SN: 4/14/17). Clovis people were once thought to be North America’s first inhabitants, but Cooper’s Ferry joins a growing number of pre-Clovis sites.
New findings at the Idaho site are intriguing, but “much more work needs to be done to establish the nature and age of the occupations,” says archaeologist Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Potter favors an ice-free corridor as the original entryway for humans into North America.
A minority of Cooper’s Ferry artifacts may date to as early as around 15,000 years ago, but sediment at the site dating to 16,000 years ago or more shows no direct links to stone tools or any other signs of human activity, Potter says. Dates of animal bones and burned wood bits from one sediment layer range over more than 4,000 years, raising questions about the extent to which geologic forces have rearranged the site’s sediment layers over time, he contends.
Even if people arrived at Cooper’s Ferry as early as 16,000 years ago, “it doesn’t refute the idea that the ice-free corridor was a potential migration route well before the Clovis occupation,” says archaeologist Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Question: Since evidence of early humans from 15,000 years ago was found in South America, do you think they migrated via the Alaskan land bridge along the coast in canoes or by land?
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Not a new concept. American archaeologists have been pushing the oldest date back continuously. Was 12,000 Yr BP. Then some finds hinted at an early date between 20 000 and 30,000 yr. BP. Provenance is always the nagging problem with many finds.
t1nick
Level 8
Oct 13, 2019
2
Evidence was found that humans existed in the Americas after the last glacial period, which was about 23,000 years ago. [nature.com]
There's also highly disputed [recent] 'evidence' that either Neanderthals or Denisovans were in the Americas 130,000 years ago. [newscientist.com]
I am not aware of that particular claim. Be careful and check the veracity of their provenience. That in itself sinks most claims. Veracity of in situ placement and consistency of their radiometric dating.
Dennis Stanford (an old boss of mine) of the Smithsonian has been researching Clovis sites in Northeastern US and France that are contemporaneous, and date to the tail end of the last Ice Age.
@AnonySchmoose I hadn't heard of that find either. It's certainly possible, but it would be an extraordinary claim. It would need a whole lot more evidence to verify. Very interesting find though!
@t1nick
The claim that humans were in the Americas after the last ice age has references from this article.
"It is thought that people migrated onto this bridge sometime between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago." Evidence proves that later they migrated into the Americas.
[nature.com]
The following is the only scientific article, that is a study, I found.
"In recent years, there is an emerging consensus that people arrived in North America at or before 15,000 years ago, as suggested by several site discoveries over the past few decades ... Data suggest that people might have been in South America before 15,000 years ago."
[journals.plos.org]
That is consistent with my understanding
@t1nick
I'm glad of that ... I posted a bit hastily, and included some sensational evidence, which hasn't been scientifically proven as yet. Thanks for keeping me more alert to real scientific data.
I worked on a site that was late Pleistocene spring site. We got chipped stone that Dennis Stanford thought related to Clovis and Folsom periods. Our radiometric dates came back between 20,000 and 30,000. However the sample was so small, and the provenance not tight enough, it has not been wholly accepted by the archaeological community.
@t1nick
That gives me optimism about some of the articles I posted, which weren't scientific enough.
I thought the scientists that believed there was only one way to N America-by walking, were being dense and giving no credit to our ancestors. Plus the fact that water has risen 200 to 300 feet since the last ice age means that there's a lot of evidence of the migration below the waterline.
MojoDave
Level 9
Oct 13, 2019
2
I thought that they must have tried many paths to migrate.
That is a good premise that evidence of routes could be under water now.
We know of at least 3 migration routes coming into North America at the end of the last Ice Age. One from Western France up through Great Britain to Greenland To NE United States (water-based migration using simple boats following southern end of continental ice sheet which covered the land and ocean - see Clovis migration).
The second, across the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska and Down the McKenzie Gap to Washington and Idaho.
The third, from Oceania and helped populate Crntral America and South America.
That is is incorrect. Many of the tribes around the Great Lakes have a northern European haplomarker and lack any sign of an Asian haplomarker. Central Americans have Oceania haplomarkers. Western tribes display the Sibero-Asian haplogroup marker.
Look into the findings of the Kinniwick find in Washington. The evidence I am referring to it is only a decade or less old.
My guess is they used both routes into the Americas..
Charlene
Level 9
Oct 13, 2019
4
I'd heard about the both-routes theory before reading this article.
I hadn't heard about them traveling in canoes along the coasts to migrate.
@AnonySchmoose it hard to break with old thought patterns, as displayed by the old beliefs surrounding Neanderthals. They were considered brutish and incapable of reasoning or speech.We know know it was quite the opposite.
@Charlene
Yes. I remember being guilty of calling people whom I judged stupid Neanderthals.
Now, as I learned recently, it would be inaccurate to think neanderthals and homo sapiens were not equally intelligent.
@AnonySchmoose I guess my point was paleoanthropolgist tend to, in my opinion, underestimate our ancestors intelligence and skills in nearly all aspects of their lives..which I don't get.
@Charlene
I don't get it either.
I sense humans have been trapped in an epoch of ego for millennia.
And that doesn't bode well for thoughtful discussions about our origins.
@AnonySchmoose it seems we can't see beyond our technological advances.
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