Humans First Appearance in the Americas
In Piau, Brazil, archaeologists say stone tools prove that humans reached what is now Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago, upending a belief that people first arrived about 13,000 years ago.
Video by Nadia Sussman on Publish Date March 27, 2014. Photo by Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times.SERRA DA CAPIVARA NATIONAL PARK, Brazil Niede Guidon still remembers her astonishment when she glimpsed the paintings.
Preserved amid the bromeliad-encrusted plateaus that tower over the thorn forests of northeast Brazil, the ancient rock art depicts fierce battles among tribesmen, orgiastic scenes of prehistoric revelry and hunters pursuing their game, spears in hand.
These were stunning compositions, people and animals together, not just figures alone, said Dr. Guidon, 81, remembering what first lured her and other archaeologists in the 1970s to this remote site where jaguars still prowl.
Hidden in the rock shelters where prehistoric humans once lived, the paintings number in the thousands. Some are thought to be more than 9,000 years old and perhaps even far more ancient. Painted in red ocher, they rank among the most revealing testaments anywhere in the Americas to what life was like millenniums before the European conquest began a mere five centuries ago.
But it is what excavators found when they started digging in the shadows of the rock art that is contributing to a pivotal re-evaluation of human history in the hemisphere.
Continue reading the main story Slide ShowReassessing Human History in the Americas
Go to previous slide Go to next slide Researchers at Serra da Capivara National Park unearthed stone tools last year that they say prove that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a
prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York TimesResearchers here say they have unearthed stone tools proving that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.
If theyre right, and theres a great possibility that they are, that will change everything we know about the settlement of the Americas, said Walter Neves, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of So Paulo whose own analysis of an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil implies that some ancient Americans resembled aboriginal Australians more than they did Asians.
Up and down the Americas, scholars say that the peopling of lands empty of humankind may have been far more complex than long believed. The radiocarbon dating of spear points found in the 1920s near Clovis, N.M., placed the arrival of big-game hunters across the Bering Strait about 13,000 years ago, long forming the basis of when humans were believed to have arrived in the Americas.
More recently, numerous findings have challenged that narrative. In Texas, archaeologists said in 2011 that they had found projectile points showing that hunter-gatherers had reached another site, known as Buttermilk Creek, as early as 15,500 years ago. Similarly, analysis of human DNA found at an Oregon cave determined that humans were there 14,000 years ago.
But it is in South America, thousands of miles from the New Mexico site where the Clovis spear points were discovered, where archaeologists are putting forward some of the most profound challenges to the Clovis-first theory.
Paleontologists in Uruguay published findings in November suggesting that humans hunted giant sloths there about 30,000 years ago . All the way in southern Chile, Tom D. Dillehay, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, has shown that humans lived at a coastal site called Monte Verde as early as 14,800 years ago.
And here in Brazils caatinga, a semi-arid region of mesas and canyons, European and Brazilian archaeologists building on decades of earlier excavations said last year that they had found artifacts at a rock shelter showing that humans had arrived in South America almost 10,000 years before Clovis hunters began appearing in North America.
The Clovis paradigm is finally buried, said Eric Boda, the French archaeologist leading the excavations here.
Exposing the tension over competing claims about where and when humans first arrived in the Americas, some scholars in the dwindling Clovis-first camp in the United States quickly rejected the findings.
Gary Haynes, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, argued that the stones found here were not tools made by humans, but instead could have become chipped and broken naturally, by rockfall. Stuart Fiedel, an archaeologist with the Louis Berger Group, an environmental consulting company, said that monkeys might have made the tools instead of humans.
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There will always be challenges to new findings.
In Australia, it was believed for decades that the native Aboriginals had only been there for 10,000 years, it was accepted scientific fact. That all changed when the skeleton of the ''Mud Lake Man'' was found and dated to 40,000 years old.
Old theories die hard, but must do die.
I would love to see a multidisciplinary study done that puts all this together. I remember reading about the geologists that spoke of the climate of the area when the Great Pyramids were built in Egypt, who were nearly stoned to death by the resident Egyptologists... Yet, their findings are proving to be right on the money.
Perhaps humans came to this hemisphere in waves... It's a shame that the first people that came here could not leave more clues... Or maybe they did and we just haven't found them yet.
Those rock paintings are really neat!
Well since the earth is only 6,000 years old according to some, the 195,000 years sounds like something,scientific. (gasp)
Actually it's only a speck in the time that the earth has been here flame.
Theories now have humans coming to the Americas in three different waves. Of course that could change tomorrow.
I remember reading about that as well Dowser. Strange how some cannot have their theories disputed. That is one thing, IMO, that holds back science.
I think that we just haven't found the clues yet. But each new discovery is uncovering whole new areas of study.
But, Luci is 1.3 millions years old - that tops your date
Actually she's a bit over 3 million years old. Still pretty good looking though, all thing considered.
I think that we've been concentrating so much on the archaeology of elsewhere, we've ignored our own area. There is much to learn here, much to discover and much to try to understand. Why we don't is beyond me!
You know, I thought the Leaky's found her - just read that it was someone else.
Damn anthro professor lied again.
Yes we have in a big way Dower. I have some theories on why. First we have only been here 10,000 years and were always hunter/gathers according to the European version of thing. So why study savages.
Actually we've been here much longer with some very advanced civilizations. Being blind to anything but their own theory is a huge problem Dowser.
That sure is something. What if for sure . Very interesting. It sounds like they are exploring in the right place.
I can only agree... I think Egyptology has been the "Cadillac" of archaeology studies for a long time-- but what good is a Cadillac? Fancy, but they go no where difficult. We should be proud of our own heritage.
Their search should be very interesting Grump.
We should be proud of our heritage, perhaps some day that will be recognized.
I believe that there is so much to study in the Americas, and we have just began to scratch the surface.
Sounds about right. Most agree the first man were known to be in N America at least 12,00 yrs, ago. Rock painting and cliff dwellings affirm this. Why not acorresponding migration or occurance inS America as well?
Interesting material, as usual, K. Thanks
No reason that their couldn't have been a separate migration from Polynesia to South America dd.
None whatsoever, K. Ironic the time frame is so close in both areas, I wonder?
A few months ago, they proved that Indians and Easter Islanders traveled back and forth so there is no reason to thing that it couldn't have been done thousands of years ago.
The Polynesian's were great seafarers, traveling all the way down to New Zealand.
I see your point. You make a good case. Have considered it in the past, but was hoping for clues to earlier travel overseas. Maybe we'll know sooner than later, with all the research being done.
Dear Friend Kavika: There is a party catering take outorder form whose writing is dated back 5 million years at Jay's Diner.
JaysSous Chef, Boiling Water Goldsteinestimates it should be ready by next Thursday.
Theories aboutantiquity are fluid. Thepre-historic rice pudding at Jay's is eternal and immutable.
We live in a world of constants and variables.
Peace, Abundant Blessings and Lots of Meat Tenderizer at Jay's.
Enoch.
LOLOL, thanks for the laugh Enoch.
I knew that Jay's and Boiling Water Goldstein would have something from the past.
It should be interesting to see how this unfolds dd.
LOL, is it power or manual 2blue?
I remember we had the conversation 'bout the cave that was found in Brazil (I believe) with 22 mummified bodies in it that was "estimated" to be 40,000 years old - it was written up in Mann's book 1491.
They have found remnants of pottery and tools on the coasts of Peru that have an extremely strong design/manufacture habit of the Asians - Chinese and Japanese - that, after initial testing, has come in at the 30,000 + years, but they're waiting for more definitive testing results to publish their findings.
If I remember correctly, the bodies were to be tested, but I haven't found anything on the results of that. Have you 1st?
No - they're just in the same limbo of the pottery/basketry artifacts.