Archaeologists found unusual bones of mastodons in one of the rivers in the south of the United States, which "told" them that America was inhabited two to three thousand years earlier than previously thought, and the finds also confirmed human guilt in the extinction of the New World megafauna, according to article published in the journal Science Advances.
“We do not yet know for sure whether people killed mastodons or simply devoured their bodies, killed by diseases or other predators. But one thing can be said already now - regardless of how people and mastodons interacted with each other, the process of their extinction dragged on for at least two thousand years, said Daniel Fisher of Michigan State University in Ann Arbor (USA).).
Until recently, it was believed that the people of the Clovis culture, who received such a name in honor of a city located in the state of New Mexico, where the remains of their technology for making tools were first found, were the first settlers who mastered the territory of North America 13.2 thousand years ago. as soon as the glaciers of the last ice age retreated.
In recent years, thanks to the discovery of more ancient remains of Indians belonging to other groups of people, scientists began to doubt that Clovis was the most ancient culture of the "first peoples of America."
Fischer and his colleagues found unexpected confirmation of this underwater, conducting underwater excavations on the banks of the Ozilla River. Here, as scientists say, there was once a half-flooded karst sinkhole, in its center there was a lake, near the shores of which ancient people lived.
Back in the 90s of the last century, scientists discovered several bones of mastodons on this coast of Ocilla, which were killed and butchered by ancient people about 14 thousand years ago. This find was received with hostility by many paleontologists and archaeologists, who believed that the date of their occurrence could be determined incorrectly and that the bones could have got to this section of the river bottom by accident, during some geological processes.
Fischer's team tested this statement in practice, trying to find other traces of a person's presence in this corner of Ocilla's bottom. In the course of underwater excavations, scientists managed to find several stone knives and bone tools, pieces of partially processed pebbles and mastodon bones with traces of cutting tools.
The age of all these tools - 14.5 thousand years - indicated that the authors of the original find were right: there really are traces of a group of ancient Indians who lived in North America about two thousand years before the arrival of the Clovis culture.
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Remains of mastodons and traces of fungi that lived in their droppings, in turn, indicate that humans ate the meat of these ancient giants for several thousand years before their extinction. This simultaneously indicates that the ancestors of the Indians could really have been involved in the "genocide" of the megafauna, and on the other hand, it indicates that the appearance of man did not lead to the instantaneous disappearance of the ice age giants. Apparently, the history of their extinction was much more complicated than we are used to believe, Fischer concludes.
