Human Presence in North America Pushed Back by Over 15,000 Years Following Groundbreaking Discovery

Scientists successfully dated several items found in the cave, producing groundbreaking results that could mean ancient humans arrived in North America 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.

For a long time, archaeologists and researchers supported the Clovis First theory, which suggests humans first arrived in the Americas around 13,000 years ago. Before this period, no humans were thought to have existed in the Americas.

Based on various artifacts found in 1934, researchers believed they were the first humans to migrate to the Americas, crossing an enormous ice bridge that connected Russia to Canada.

This unique culture, which may have originated in Asia, is known to have made unique tools, utilized hides, and made items using wood and natural fibers. 

While the dates align with older testing, suggesting the Clovis culture did arrive in the Americas around 13,000 years before the present day, the consensus now is that the group was not the first to reach the continent. 

However, the theory was finally dismissed in 2008 when a team of researchers led by Dr. Dennis Jenkins from the University of Oregon produced radiocarbon dating that once and for all proved that the Clovis culture was not the first to arrive in the Americas. 

Once the test results returned, the researchers were shocked to learn that humans were present in Oregon around 14,340 years ago.

While some evidence suggests migrants arrived 2,000 or 5,000 years earlier than the Clovis culture, a cave in Mexico may suggest humans were present in North America over 15,000 years earlier than once.

This means the people of the Chiquihuite Cave arrived in America over 15,000 years before the Clovis culture. However, researchers say there’s no sign this mysterious group remained in the gene pool, giving the impression they might have died out.

“For decades, people have passionately debated when the first humans entered the Americas. Chiquihuite Cave will create a lot more debate as it is the first site that dates the arrival of people to the continent to around 30,000 years ago, 15,000 years earlier than previously thought,” he said.

How long the ancient humans used the cave throughout the year is still debatable. However, the researchers are certain it was used extensively. 

“These early visitors didn’t occupy the cave continuously. We think people spent part of the year there using it as a winter or summer shelter or as a base to hunt during migration. This could be the America’s oldest-ever hotel,” said Willerslev.

The cave sits at over 9,000 feet above sea level and would have been the perfect shelter for Stone Age humans. 

The items include “a wide range of animals, including black bears, rodents, bats, voles, and even kangaroo rats.”

He added, “Probably when herds of large mammals would have been in the area and who had little experience with humans, so they would have been easy prey.”

“We don’t know who they were, where they came from, or where they went. They are a complete enigma,”  said Dr. Ardelean from the University of Zacatecas in Mexico.

“We falsely assume that the indigenous populations in the Americas today are direct descendants of the earliest Americans, but now we do not think that is the case,” added Dr. Ardelean. 

“By the time the famous Clovis population entered America, the very early Americans had disappeared thousands of years before. There could have been many failed colonisations that were lost in time and did not leave genetic traces in the population today,” said Dr. Ardelean. 

“The peopling of the Americas is the last holy grail in modern archaeology,” he added. 

“This site doesn’t solve anything, it just shows that these early sites exist. We are dealing with a handful of humans from thousands of years ago so we cannot expect the signals to be very clear. We have literally dug deeper than anyone has done in the past,” he added.

He added, “We have shown the previously long-held date of human presence is not the oldest date for populating the Americas; it is the explosion date of populating the Americas.”

The location of Chiquihuite Cave definitely rewrites what has conventionally been taught in history and archaeology and shows that we need to rethink where we look for sites of the earliest people in the Americas,” he said. 

Further investigations can begin to paint a picture of what life was like for these early pioneers, how they lived, what they ate, and quite possibly what led them to the Americas in the first place.

“I will never forget being part of this research, it was an unbelievable experience. The implications of these findings are as important, if not more important, than the finding itself. This is only the start of the next chapter in the hotly debated early peopling of the Americas,” he said.