Message #75203

[Bianca]

The find's implications are tremendous. For almost a century, archaeologists believed that people arrived in North America 13,000 years ago--a conclusion based on dating sites with a distinctive
stone tool type first found near Clovis, New Mexico in the 1930s.

For the last two decades, the "Clovis-first" idea has been under steady assault. Call it revisionist prehistory: researchers have turned up evidence they say supports everything from a much earlier migration from Asia to a sea-borne invasion from Europe.

The coprolites Jenkins found in the Paisley caves may well be the final nail in Clovis' coffin.

While other supposed pre-Clovis sites have been bogged down in arguments over whether stone tools were made by people or by accident, there's no doubt who made the coprolites Jenkins found in the Paisley cave. "It's a much more compelling case than this odd-looking rock found next to that piece of charcoal. We know a human made this turd, whereas we don't know if that was a campfire," says Southern Methodist University archaeologist David Meltzer. "The pre-Clovis genie is sort of out of the bottle, and there's no way of stuffing it back in."



Contributing editor Andrew Curry is based in Berlin, Germany.



© 2008 by the Archaeological Institute of America

www.archaeology.org/online/features/coprolites/