Until now we thought that the population of Clovis (from New Mexico where traces were first discovered), referred to as the Paleoindians, appeared in northern North America some 13,000 years ago, but archaeologists have just discovered in a cave that it had
visitors already 30 thousand years ago - unfortunately who it was and where it came from is still a mystery.
This is really surprising information, because for the last few decades we have found traces of the Clovis culture in the area, more specifically stone tools, dating back to 11-13 thousand years ago. Researchers suspected that it was then that people from Siberia came to Alaska using a natural land bridge
and later, when the ice receded, it spread to modern-day Canada, the United States, Mexico, and South America.
While there have been suggestions in recent years that it may have happened earlier, some 20,000 years ago (some excavations in Texas have shown), there was no indication that we were wrong for another 10,000 years.
And these are the conclusions of the research on tools discovered in the Chiquihuite cave in northern Mexico, from where approximately 2,000 stone tools and fragments have been obtained in the last 10 years - analysis of tools and DNA from sediments from their surroundings suggest a period between 25 and 30 thousand years ago.
The team of scientists found DNA samples of various plants and animals, such as black bears, rodents, bats, voles and rat-dwellers.
Interestingly, there was no human DNA there, which means that people did not spend much time there: - The early visitors did not live permanently in this cave, we think they spent part of the year there, treating it as a summer or winter shelter, or
a base for hunting trips.
It may be the oldest hotel in America - says Prof.
Eske Willerslev.
In his opinion, the discovery is so important and groundbreaking that it requires rewriting human history in America, although at the moment it is difficult to say anything more about these first inhabitants.
- We don't know who they were, where they came from and where they went.
They are a complete mystery.
By the time the famous Clovis population appeared in America, these truly early Americans had not been there for thousands of years.
In fact, there could be many unsuccessful colonizations that have been lost over time and left no genetic traces in the modern population, adds one of the study's authors, Ciprian Ardelean.