Coming to America

When did the first settlers migrate from Asia to the New World? Archaeologists now say it may have been tens of thousands of years earlier than once thought.

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Still, if the Clovis people were not first, where is the evidence of their predecessors? According to a growing group of archaeologists, the signs of the original Americans can be found in several places:

Monte Verde, Chile

Perhaps the most convincing candidate for a pre-Clovis site is Monte Verde, on the Chinchihuapi Creek in southern Chile. A team led by University of Kentucky archaeologist Tom Dillehay discovered indisputable traces there of a human settlement that was inhabited between 12,800 and 12,300 years ago. Usually all scientists can find from that far back are stones and bones. In this case, thanks to a peat layer that formed during the late Pleistocene era, organic matter was mummified and preserved as well.

In a decade of digging, Dillehay's team found an unparalleled array of artifacts, including not only stone tools and animal bones but also chunks of mastodon meat, wild potatoes, and seaweed and other plants that must have been imported from the Pacific coast, some 40 miles away. The archaeologists discovered fire pits surrounded by burned wood chips, wooden lances with hardened tips, wooden basins containing seeds, grindstones -- and a human footprint. The foundation of a wishbone-shaped structure held the remains of more than 20 types of medicinal plants, some of which bore marks that may be the imprints of human molars. Most intriguing of all, the scientists unearthed wooden foundations and crude timbers that Dillehay believes supported an oval, tentlike dwelling similar to late Pleistocene shelters found on the Siberian plains. Says he: "We know these people exploited a wide variety of resources stretching from Monte Verde all the way to the coast. They used wood, ate plants, fashioned stone tools and from time to time captured game animals, such as mastodons and paleollamas."

All the artifacts from Monte Verde have now been subjected to dozens of radiocarbon analyses -- a standard archaeological dating technique in which the amount of radioactive carbon in an organic specimen is used to calculate its age. Dillehay says he is "very confident" that he has found remnants of a culture that existed some 125 centuries ago.

Dillehay has also uncovered traces of what may be an even older campsite nearby on a buried promontory. The evidence: 26 fractured stones, some of which were clearly worked by human hands, as well as three clay-lined pits containing charcoal that may be nearly 33,000 years old. Although radiocarbon dating supports this idea, Dillehay is reluctant to draw any conclusions. "The older level is a hell of a problem," he says, "and it simply will not go away. The more I look at the evidence, the more it looks like it represents human culture, but intellectually I still can't accept that humans were in the New World earlier than 15,000 to 20,000 years ago."

Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, Pennsylvania

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