BBC Focus Magazine

[Healerman]

A new and astonishing chapter has been added to North American prehistory in regards to the first hunters and their hunt for the now extinct giant mammoth-like creatures -- the mastodons. Professor Eske Willerslev's team from the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, has in collaboration with Michael Waters' team at the Center for the Study of the First Americans, University of Texas A&M, shown that the hunt for large mammals occurred at least 1,000 years before previously assumed.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 145054.htm

It's an interesting find that puts the earliest humans in the Americas far earlier than was "generally" accepted and may finally allow the Clovis culture to be put in to a proper perspective, rather than the dogmatic position it has held for so many years.

[Nails]

I had posted this as a new thread then just realised I was well over 24 hours slower than Mr. Healerman!

Old American theory is 'speared'

An ancient bone with a projectile point lodged within it appears to up-end - once and for all - a long-held idea of how the Americas were first populated.

The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago.

This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent's original inhabitants.

News of the dating results is reported in Science magazine.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6054/351.abstract



In truth, the "Clovis first" model, which holds to the idea that America's original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.

A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this - perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago.

The mastodon rib, however, really leaves the once cherished model with nowhere to go.

Continued here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15391388