Were humans in US 115,000 years earlier than thought?

‘Bones and teeth deliberately broken’

EARLY humans roamed what is now the United States 115,000 years earlier than previously thought, a study claims.

Scientists say the fossilised remains of a butchered mastodon – or primitive elephant – found in California prove our ancestors were hunting for meat.

A mysterious tribe that lived on the continent about 130,000 years ago smashed the beast’s bones with stone hammers to get meat and extract marrow, researchers said. It may have also been killed by the primitive humans.

Judy Gradwohl, of the San Diego Natural History Museum, said: ‘This discovery is rewriting our understanding of when humans reached the New World.

‘The evidence we found at this site indicates some hominin species was living in North America 115,000 years earlier than previously thought.

‘This raises intriguing questions about how these early humans arrived here and who they were.’

It had been understood humans had only arrived in the Americas within the last 15,000 years. The mastodon fossils were discovered by chance 25 years ago during routine scientific work at a freeway expansion project in San Diego – but dating technology at the time was not so advanced.

The long bones, tusks, and molars were buried alongside large stones that appeared to have been used as hammers and anvils, the research in the journal Nature reported.

Study lead author Dr Steve Holen, director of research at the Centre for American Paleolithic Research in Colorado, said: ‘The bones and several teeth show clear signs of having been deliberately broken by humans with manual dexterity and experiential knowledge.

‘This breakage pattern has also been observed at mammoth fossil sites in Kansas and Nebraska, where alternative explanations such as geological forces or gnawing by carnivores have been ruled out.’ The mastodon, along with its cousin the woolly mammoth, were the two elephant-like giants that dominated North America during the last Ice Age.