by JESSICA SARACENI
Carbon dating has shown that human coprolites from Oregon’s Paisley Caves are 14,500 years old, making them the earliest direct evidence of people in America. Fragments of stone tools that differ from Clovis tools have also been found in the caves. “It looks like you’ve got a separate group of people on the landscape, and these people are making different kinds of arrowheads or spear points,” said Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon.
This article from Nature News combines the information gleaned from the Paisley Caves coprolites and David Reich’s recent genetic study, which suggests that three waves of migration from Asia populated the New World. (The Harvard Medical School researcher and his team analyzed genetic variants from 52 different groups of modern Native Americans.) The two studies support the idea that people traveled across the Bering land bridge some 15,000 years ago, and moved down the Pacific coastline to the tip of Chile. The spread inland happened later. “There’s going to be a big learning curve if you come by land. If you’re coming along the coast, the sea mammals are pretty consistent and you can move quickly,” commented Michael Waters of Texas A&M University.
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