This indicates that the migration pattern of the first settlers of the Americas was Not from North America going south – but rather, from South America to North America. Then, of course, there are the Olmec – the people who brought civilization to the Americas with their Technology, Art, and culture.
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| Pedra Furada Rock Art |
When all the new information is compiled it is clear that there was not one peopling of the Americas, but rather, there was at least five. For more than 100 years, researchers have claimed that there were very early human sites in the tropical forests of eastern South America.
Pedra Furada includes a collection of rock shelters used for thousands of years by human populations. Site investigators found stone tools and charcoal hearths at the earliest levels. The first excavations yielded artefacts with Carbon-14 dates of 48,000 to 32,000 years B.C.E. Repeated analysis has confirmed this dating, carrying the range of dates up to 60,000 B.C.E. Archaeological levels that are well-excavated yield dates between 32,160 ± 1,000 years B.C.E., and 17,000 ± 400 B.C.E. The collection of Stone Age artefacts includes darts and atlatls but no arrows or bows.
Unlike Clovis sites, those in Brazil include painted caves and rock shelters. Food remains include nuts, legumes, fish, shellfish, and small game animals. Among the artefacts are triangular, sometimes stemmed points but no fluted points, (points referrers to spear and arrow tips). The newly dating sites include Caverna da Pedra Pintada, Santana de Riacho, and Boquete in Brazil. News-Story: Brasilia (AFP), 09-10-2013. A new exhibit in Brazil showcases artefacts dating as far back as 30,000 years ago -- throwing a wrench in the commonly held theory humans first crossed to the Americas from Asia a mere 12,000 years ago.
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| Pedra Furada Rock Art |
The 100 items on display in Brasilia, including cave paintings and ceramic art, depict animals, ceremonies, hunting expeditions -- and even scenes from the sex lives of this ancient group of early Americans.
The artefacts come from the Serra da Capivara national park in Brazil's North-eastern Piaui state, on the border of the Amazon and Atlantic Forests, which attracted the hunter-gatherer civilization that left behind this hoard of local art. Since the 1970s, Franco-Brazilian archaeologist Niede Guidon has headed a mission to carry out the large-scale excavation of Piaui's interior. "It's difficult to think there exists a site anywhere with a higher concentration of cave art," the 80-year-old Guidon told AFP.
Other traces of the civilization include charcoal remains of structured fires, explained Guidon, who hails from Sao Paulo. "To date, these are the oldest traces" of human existence in the Americas, she emphasized. The widely held theory has suggested human beings only reached the Americas some 12,000 years ago from Asia, crossing the Bering Strait to reach Alaska. Some archaeologists contend flaked pebbles at the Brazilian sites are not evidence of a crude, human-made fire hearth made some 40 millennia ago, but are rather geofacts -- a natural stone formation, not a man-made one.
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| One of the Archeologic site Monte Verde, in Chile |
But Guidon said she believes the Serra dwellers may have come originally from Africa, and she said the cave art provides compelling evidence of early human activity.
The paintings are estimated to date back some 29,000 years, she said, noting: "When it began in Europe and Africa, it did here too." Other sites, including Valsequillo in Mexico and Monte Verde in Chile, also indicate the presence of communities tens of thousands of years ago.
These sites have led archaeologists to speculate that peoples travelled various routes to reach the Americas and at different stages, archeologist Gisele Daltrini Felice told AFP. Scientific analysis of early skull finds in the US has often been halted by Native American custom which assumes that any ancient remains involve their ancestors and must be handed over. However, this evidence that another race may have pre-dated Native Americans could strengthen legal challenges from researchers to force access to such remains. Archaeologists: Niede Guidon , Gisele Daltrini Felice.
Tests on skulls found in Mexico suggest they are almost 13,000 years old - and shed fresh light on how humans colonised the Americas. The human skulls are the oldest tested so far from the continent, and their shape is set to inflame further controversy over native American burial rights. Mexico appears to have been a crossroads for people spreading across the Americas.
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| Reconstructed face of a 12,000 years old Teenager Naia |
The skulls were analysed by a scientist from John Moores University in Liverpool, UK, with help from teams in Oxford and Mexico itself. They came from a collection of 27 skeletons of early humans kept at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
These were originally discovered more than 100 years ago in the area surrounding the city. The latest radiocarbon dating techniques allow dating to be carried out on tiny quantities of bone, although the process is expensive.
Dr. Silvia Gonzalez, who dated the skulls, said: "The museum knew that the remains were of significant historical value but they hadn't been scientifically dated." "I decided to analyse small bone samples from five skeletons using the latest carbon-dating techniques," she told BBC News Online. "I think everybody was amazed at how old they were."
The earliest human remains tested prior to this had been dated at approximately 12,000 years ago. Domestic tools dated at 14,500 years have been found in Chile - but with no associated human remains.
The latest dating is not only confirmation that humans were present in the Americas much earlier than 12,000 years ago, but also that they were not related to early native Americans. The two oldest skulls were "dolichocephalic" - that is, long and narrow-headed. Other, more recent skulls were a different shape - short and broad, like those from native American remains.
This suggests that humans dispersed within Mexico in two distinct waves and that a race of long and narrow-headed humans may have lived in North America prior to the American Indians. Traditionally, American Indians were thought to have been the first to arrive on the continent, crossing from Asia on a land bridge. Dr. Gonzalez told BBC News Online:
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| African genes in Mexico Cities |
"We believe that the older race may have come from what is now Japan, via the Pacific islands and perhaps the California coast. "Our next project is to examine remains found in the Baha peninsula of California and look at their DNA to see if they are related.
Sites with triangular and sometimes stemmed points and diverse modern fauna and flora, date to between 11,500 and 8,500 years ago.
The first secure evidence of early Paleoindians on the Pacific coast was from two south Peruvian sites with beginning dates between 11,100 and 10,700 years ago. At the sites Quebrada and Jaguay, the ancient hearths contained carbonized fragments of stone tools and remains of shellfish, small fish, and birds, but no large game.
Luzia: Several studies concerning the extra-continental morphological affinities of Paleo-Indian skeletons, carried out independently in South and North America, have indicated that the Americas were first occupied by non-Mongoloids that made their way to the New World through the Bering Strait in ancient times.
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| Moche civilization of Peru 3000 to 100 AD |
The first South Americans show a clear resemblance to modern South Pacific and African populations. In none of these analyses the first Americans show any resemblance to either northeast Asians or modern native Americans.
So far, these studies have included affirmed and putative early skeletons thought to date between 8,000 and 10,000 years B.P. In this work, the extra-continental morphological affinities of a Paleo-Indian skeleton well dated between 11,000 and 11,500 years B.P. (Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1, "Luzia") is investigated, using as comparative samples Howells' (1989) worldwide modern series and Habgood's (1985) Old World Late.
The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology.
Below: A skull belonging to a roughly 20-year-old Australoid woman that was unearthed in Brazil by the French archaeologist Annette Amperaire in 1971, nicknamed “Luzia”. Since Luzia's discovery, at least 50 similarly un-Mongoloid Palaeoamerican remains have been found in the Lagoa Santa area near where "Luzia" herself was found.
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| Reconstructed face of Luzia |
They all seem to have been buried within a small area that may have been a cemetery. This raises the intriguing question of whether the Lagoa Santa population at this early time, was perhaps already settled in a specific area and perhaps were even no longer just hunter-gatherers.
Deep inside an underwater cave in Mexico, archaeologists may have discovered the oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas. Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton—along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. DNA: Dr. Gonzalez, John Moores University Liverpool, Archaeologist Annette Amperaire
Skeletal remains have been excavated over the past four years near the town of Tulum, about 80 miles southwest of Cancún, by a team of scientists led by Arturo González, director of the Desert Museum in Saltillo, Mexico. Clues from the skeletons' skulls hint that the people may not be of northern Asian descent, which would contradict the dominant theory of New World settlement.
That theory holds that ancient humans first came to North America from northern Asia via a now-submerged land bridge across the Bering Sea. "The shape of the skulls has led us to believe that Eva and the others have more of an affinity with people from South Asia than North Asia," González explained. The three other skeletons excavated in the caves have been given a date range of 11,000 to 14,000 years ago, based on radiocarbon dating. Tulum.
But at the time Eve of Naharon is believed to have lived there, sea levels were 200 feet (60 meters) lower, and the Yucatán Peninsula was a wide, dry prairie. The polar ice caps melted dramatically 8,000 to 9,000 years ago, causing sea levels to rise hundreds of feet and submerging the burial grounds of the skeletons.
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| Olmec Head |
Stalactites and stalagmites then grew around the remains, preventing them from being washed out to sea. González has also found remains of elephants, giant sloths, and other ancient fauna in the caves. Fell's Cave is a rock shelter in the valley of the Chico River, not far from the Strait of Magellan in the Chilean part of the Tierra del Fuego Archipelago.
It was initially occupied by hunters around 10,000 B.C.E. who left behind an impressive layer of refuse which was sealed by hundreds of pounds of debris from the fall of the shelter overhang.
The hunter's refuse included fire-pots with the broken bones of native horse, sloth, and guanaco, as well as stone and bone tools. Among the stone tools were fishtail spear-points, a form of stone point found in many places in South America. Fishtail points are flaked bi-facially (that is, working on both sides) and have pronounced shoulders above a clearly shaped stem.
Some are fluted with small channels removed from the bottom. In 1936-37, the discoveries in Fell's Cave represented the first evidence of early humans in South America. Since then, older sites such as Monte Verde have been identified. The remains were found some 50 feet (15 meters) below sea level.
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| A Peruvian Woman around 200 BCE |
Chile: Monte Verde, Chile is a boggy stream-bed in which mastodon bones and wet preserved plant remains were found with a few stone tools, including three bi-pointed points and a crude bi-face. Monte Verde which was occupied some 14,500 years ago, provides a slightly different view of life for the early inhabitants of South America.
Due to the quality of preservation at Monte Verde, natural materials such as wood, fiber, and cordage remain. Even a human footprint has been found there. This range of artifacts crafted from perishable materials is typically lost to archaeologists.
Their preservation due to the extremely wet conditions at Monte Verde indicates that baskets, fishing nets, and tents made from hides were among the range of belongings used by the thirty or so people who lived there. These campers were likely able fishermen and gatherers of wild plants, which would have supplemented their diet of hunted animals.
They also crafted exquisite leaf-shaped spear-points. These weapons and hunting tools are not dissimilar from the examples from Fell's Cave, which suggests that the two sites, while separated in time by more than 4,000 years, were part of a long-standing and connected tradition of thriving in the new world.
Venezuela: At Taima Taima, an oil field site in northern Venezuela, fragmentary tools were found with cut mastodon bones in a spring where cultural and natural materials had become mixed.
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| Moche nose ornament |
One tool is a bi-pointed style point. The ancient habitat was swampy, wooded, and subtropical. The radiocarbon dates range too widely for comfort - from about 41,000 to 12,000 B.P. Late Pleistocene people may have killed mastodon there, but exactly when is not certain.
In nearby Colombia, early pre-pottery sites have also been found, notably at El Jobo in Falcón, that date to about 14,920 B.C.E.
There carved stone was used for such objects as small pendants: shell and bone are also known to have been used. Some of these sites contain triangular points, while others have ground-stone tools. Food remains are tropical forest fruits and nuts. In the Andes highlands of Peru, early work had uncovered possible big-game kill sites dating to as early as 20,000 years ago, but these had no clear association with humans. Researchers: Arturo González. End of part 40f 4. Next blog 05/05/19. A 40 points summary of the main fact pertaining to America's history.
