Mammoth bones hint humans were in North America earlier than thought - The Future
A site where 37,000 years ago a mammoth mother and her cub met their end offers some of the best evidence for humans settling in North America much earlier than conventionally thought.
Bones from the abattoir record how humans shaped chunks of their long bones into disposable knives to break up their carcasses, and make their fat over fires. But a key detail sets this site apart from others from this era. That’s in New Mexico—a place where most archaeological evidence doesn’t locate humans until tens of thousands of years later.
Researchers reveal a wealth of evidence that is rarely found in one place. These include fossils with blunt force fractures, bone-chilling blades with worn edges, and signs of a controlled fire. And thanks to carbon-dating analysis of collagen extracted from mammoth bones, the site also dates from 36,250 to 38,900 years old, making it one of the oldest known sites left by early humans in North America.
“What we got was absolutely incredible,” said lead author Timothy Rowe, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Texas at the Austin Jackson School of Geosciences. “This is not a charismatic site with a beautiful skeleton laid out on its side. It’s all broken. But that’s the story.”
The findings were published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Rowe doesn’t usually research mammoths or humans. He was involved because the bones appeared in his backyard, literally. A neighbor saw weathered tusk from a hillside on his New Mexico property in 2013. When Rowe went to investigate, he found a shattered mammoth skull and other bones that appeared to have been accidentally broken. It appears to be a slaughterhouse. But suspected ancient human sites are shrouded in uncertainty. It is very difficult to determine what was shaped by nature versus human hands.
This uncertainty has led to debate in the anthropological community about when humans first arrived in North America. The Clovis culture, which dates back 16,000 years, left behind elaborate stone forging tools.
But at older sites where stone tools weren’t present, the evidence became more subjective, said Mike Collins, a retired professor at Texas State University, who was not involved with the paper and who oversaw research at Gault, a well-known archaeological site nearby. Austin with lots of Clovis and pre-Clovis artifacts.
Although the giant site has no clearly associated stone tools, Rowe and his co-authors found a range of supporting evidence by placing samples from the site through scientific analysis in the laboratory.
Among other findings, a CT scan taken by the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility revealed bone fragments with microscopic fracture tissue similar to freshly cut bovine bone and well-placed puncture wounds that would help drain fat from ribs and vertebrae.
“There are only a few efficient ways to skin a cat,” says Rowe. “The slaughtering pattern is quite distinctive.”
In addition, chemical analysis of the sediment surrounding the bones showed that the fire particles came from continuous and controlled burns, not lightning strikes or forest fires. The material also contained crushed bones and the burnt remains of small animals—mostly fish (though located more than 200 feet above the nearest river), but also birds, mice, and lizards.
Based on genetic evidence from Indigenous populations in South and Central America and artifacts from other archaeological sites, some scientists have proposed that North America had at least two founding populations: Clovis and pre-Clovis peoples with different genetic lineages.
The researchers suggest that the New Mexico site, with its age and bone tools rather than elaborate rock technology, could support this theory. Collins said the research adds to the growing evidence for pre-Clovis societies in North America while providing tools that can help others find evidence that might otherwise be overlooked.
“The team has done an excellent and thorough job representing frontier research,” Collins said. “It forges a path that others can learn from and follow.”
Additional co-authors are from the Gault School of Archaeological Research, University of Michigan, Aarhus University, Stafford Research, and UT Austin.
The Jackson School, the National Science Foundation, and the WJJ Gordon Foundation supported the work.
Source: UT Austin
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