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Could there have been humans in North America 14,000 years ago? |
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Aubrey Manning presents a new series of
archaeological mysteries from around the world.
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| David Scofield, Aubrey Manning and Jim Adovasio on the steps leading up to the Meadowcroft excavations. |
4. The Meadowcroft Rock Shelter
Aubrey Manning visits the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter near Pittsburgh to examine evidence that there were humans in North America 14,000 years ago, earlier than anyone thought possible. But how did they get there? Over the ice from the North-West or even across the Atlantic Ocean from the East?
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| Left:Jim Adovasio examines the excavations inside the Meadowcroft rock shelter. The oldest layers may date back 16,000 years. |
Until a few years ago archaeologists thought they understood the story of the first Americans. Prehistoric hunters had followed their prey from Siberia across what was then land into Alaska. 12,500 years ago, a corridor had melted through the ice sheet allowing the people to move south into what is now the USA. Soon after that date their carefully made stone tools such as arrow heads and spear points become common. The tools and the people who made them take their name from the site of Clovis in New Mexico where they were first found.
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| Left: Presenter, Aubrey Manning with archaeologist Dr James Adovasio Right: The cliff near the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania is still much as it would have been when humans first visited it, maybe 16,000 years ago. |
But a few excavations have now started a major controversy. Aubrey Manning visits one of them, the Meadowcroft rock shelter near Pittsburgh where Jim Adovasio started to dig down beneath the Clovis layers. He began to find evidence of human habitation and an earlier generation of stone tools. Similar finds have now been reported from Cactus Hill in West Virginia and even from a site in Chile in South America. But just how good is the evidence for dates of up to 14,000 years ago? And if people were in the Americas that long ago, how did they get there? They surely could not have crossed the great ice sheet that capped the north of the continent in the last Ice Age. Could they have hopped from inlet to inlet around the edges of the glaciers using small boats? Or could they even have made the Atlantic crossing from Europe? Similarities with stone tools from Europe suggest that perhaps they could have, but the arguments - and the mystery - continue.
 Listen again to the programme
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EXTRA LISTENING - EXTENDED INTERVIEWS |
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1. Dr Jim Adovasio - Outside the shelter
2. Dr Jim Adovasio - Inside the shelter
3. Dr Jim Adovasio - Stone Tools
4. Dr Jim Adovasio - First Americans
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RELATED LINKS |
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