Up until now , it had been thought human being enrol North America across the Bering Strait around 14,000 years ago . Now , Modern evidence has shown beyond a doubt that it was in fact 10,000 years earlier than that .
Researchers from Canada and the UK have re - examined and radiocarbon - dated off-white excavate from the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon part of northwest Canada , near the Alaska boundary line , and get hold undeniable trace of human activity that go steady back 24,000 years . Their research is print inPLOS One .
The land site was first excavate by archaeologist Jacques Cinq - Mars between 1977 and 1987 . Cinq - Mars hear a wealth of brute bones , and based on the radiocarbon dating , proposed that man first finalise in North America towards the end of the last meth age , around 30,000 eld ago .
However , with the absence of any other archeological sites of a like long time , as well as a lack of grounds that the animate being clappers plant – which included horse , mammoth , bison , and caribou – were there due to human activity such as hunt , Cinq - Mars ’ hypothesis proved controversial .
To adjudicate the matter once and for all , doctoral student Lauriane Bourgeon and her supervisory program Professor Ariane Burke of the University of Montreal spent two years examining the 36,000 bone fragment from the Bluefish Caves that had been preserved at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau .
They found undeniable touch of human activity in 15 bones , with a further 20 fragments also usher likely traces of the same type of activity .
There was evidence that a " series of straight , V - shaped lines on the surface of the bones were made by gem dick used to skin animals , " said Burke in astatement . " These are sure cut - marks create by humans . "
They also institutionalize the bones off to the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at Oxford University in the UK to be radiocarbon - go out again . They dated the old ivory , a sawbuck mandible with stone mark from a tool used to remove its clapper , back to between 23,000 and 24,000 class ago .
" Our discovery confirms late analyses and demonstrates that this is the early know internet site of human settlement in Canada , " tell Burke . “ It evidence that Eastern Beringia was populate during the last ice age . "
According to Burke , previous report in population genetics have shown that a group consisting of a few thousand individual lived in isolation in Beringia – a immense region that stretches from the Lena river in Russia to the Mackenzie river in Canada – around 15,000 to 24,000 class ago .
Burke confirmed that their breakthrough swear the “ Beringian standstill [ genetic isolation ] theory ” that “ during the Last Glacial Maximum , Beringia was isolated from the rest period of North America by glacier and steppe too inhospitable for human occupation to the West . ”
This intend the earliest human presence in North America can now be dated back to the last crank age . These people , potentially taking refuge in the Bluefish Caves , would therefore be the ancestor of the citizenry who would colonize the entire continent .
