On a remote forest riverbank in northern Idaho, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of human occupation going back more than 13,500 years, adding to the signs of an increasingly ancient human presence in the Northwest, and fueling the debate about how the regions earliest settlers got there.
The oldest evidence, found in test pits dug along the North Fork of the Clearwater River, includes a blade-like tool fashioned from a rock cobble and dozens of flakes left over from the tool-making process, known as debitage.
The artifacts were found in a layer of soil with charcoal that was radiocarbon dated to 13,740 to 13,490 calendar years ago.
More than 13,000 years of use at Kelly Forks are revealed in the array of stone points found there, including a Goshen point from the Northern Plains (second from left) and the oldest from the Western Stemmed Tradition (third from left) (Photo courtesy Laura Longstaff)Perhaps more important, a few layers above those ancient finds, researchers found 19 detailed and distinctive stone points, fashioned in whats known as the Western Stemmed Tradition.
The oldest of them dating to just over 11,000 years ago, these points are the signature of a culture whose traces have been found throughout the Great Basin and the Northwest.
Western Stemmed points discovered elsewhere have been dated to a similar range as the Idaho finds, and in some cases even earlier, including Oregons Paisley Caves, where samples have been dated, somewhat controversially, to more than 14,000 years old.
[Read about the latest research from Paisley Caves: Ancient Feces From Oregon Cave Arent Human, Study Says, Adding to Debate on First Americans ]Taken together, the range of artifacts found at the Idaho site, known as Kelly Forks, suggests long and regular use by ancient hunter-gatherers, primarily for making tools and processing game, according to Laura Longstaff of the University of Idaho, who reported her teams findings at the annual meeting of the Montana Archaeological Society .
There is enough material associated with the earliest dates to get an idea of the animals they hunted, tools they were making, stone they used at 13,000 years ago, she said in an interview.
And just having anything associated with these dates is enough to get excited about.
Chemical analysis of the flake tool revealed it to have traces of proteins associated with rabbit flesh, she added, so that means that people were using rabbit as a resource during the earliest occupation we encountered at the site, which is really cool.
But the more recent, 11,000-year-old points found at Kelly Forks are equally significant, she said, because they add important new data to the mounting evidence of the Western Stemmed Tradition in the Northwest.
They may also shed light on the Traditions proximity, if any, to the Clovis, whose own unique tools found throughout North America suggest they were the first widespread culture on the continent.
[Read about recent DNA research into the Clovis culture: Genome of Americas Only Clovis Skeleton Reveals Origins of Native Americans ]
Adding to the debate re the Clovis people.
K....
Just adding to the belief that if there were 'people' in one area of N. America, there could be the same people in other areas. Certainly making the Clovis people theory more of a 'fact', than a theory.
That is true dd. The ''discoveries'' are starting to cover most of the west. Now, where there people before the Clovis.
It's does get interesting.
Clovis was just a central population site that got the attention 'cause nothing else had been found - yet.
Still haven't seen or heard how they explain the eastern tribal findings that date back 15,000 years in Florida.
A lot of unanswered question remain 1st.
There is a site in South Carolina, that the initial test say 25,000 years old. I've heard nothing about that in the last year though.
Thanks pretty interesting Marine...
Guess it'll teach them to invade our territory.
Makes one think of the lost colony of Roanoke... Perhaps it was Viking DNA...
Wouldn't that be neat! Or maybe some restless Europeans crossed the ice or make boats that could hug the coastline and come over from Europe long ago...
Or it could have been that Indians went to Europe, did a little DNA spreading, discovered that they were nothing but savages and came back home....