Stargeek Atlantis, Episode Two

Here's a discovery that is quite literally full of shit. From the Washington Post for April 4:

Using radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis, an international team concluded that fossilized feces found five feet below the surface of an arid cave [in Oregon] are significantly older than any previous human remains unearthed in the Americas.

About 1,000 years older, in fact, placing people genetically similar to Native Americans in North America more than 14,000 years ago.

The discovery ... is a blow to the widely held theory that the Clovis culture - named after a site in New Mexico where its distinct artifacts and fluted spearheads were first identified in the 1930s - was the first human presence in North America. [Dennis] Jenkins [of the University of Oregon, who oversaw the dig.] said that while the human DNA found in Oregon could be from ancestors of the Clovis culture, none of the distinctive Clovis technology has been found in the region.

The "Clovis first" theory has been challenged by almost a decade of discoveries from Canada to the southern tip of South America that indicate that humans were present before the time of the Clovis civilization, generally dated at about 13,000 years ago. But yesterday's report is considered key because it is the first to involve datable human DNA.

Some criticize the finding, suggesting the human DNA may be the result of later contamination of earlier animal feces, but the team says there is too much human protein to be explained that way.

Besides the sheer coolness of the find, there is another interesting aspect.

If the discovery is ultimately confirmed and accepted by anthropologists, it will also challenge the prevailing theory about how humans spread across the Americas.

Most experts agree that the first American inhabitants came from Siberia, traveling over what was then a land and ice bridge across the Bering Strait to what is now Alaska, probably before 15,000 years ago. Much of Canada was then covered by an ice sheet that would have made it impossible to migrate southward.

Using geological and climate information, researchers have concluded that a corridor of ice-free land opened in inland Canada between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, and that the earliest inhabitants could have made their way to the high plains of the United States by that path. Humans are believed to have then spread quickly across North America and then South America - doing so in hundreds, rather than thousands, of years.

But if very early humans lived in Oregon, that suggests they either came directly from Asia by boat or traveled down the Pacific coastline after crossing the land bridge.

Of those two, I find the idea of skimming the coast in small craft a more likely scenario than a direct transit from Asia, but either way, it requires a re-think of how early people lived and traveled. Which is what is so cool about science, including the so-called "soft" sciences like archaeology and anthropology: There is always more to learn.