First Americans not as old as thought
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 23 February 2007
The belief in how the first stone-age people arrived in America more than 12,000 years ago has been undermined by a study ofartifacts believed to have belonged to the earliest Americans.
For more than 50 years, archaeologists thought the Americas had been populated by stone-age people migrating from Siberia. But now scientists have discovered that the artifacts are not as old as once thought and that the people who they belonged to could not have been the first Americans.
The study focuses on the bones and stone tools of the Clovis people, who are named after a town in New Mexico where archaeologists unearthed the distinctive artifacts in 1932.
Carbon-dating carried out in the 1960s found the remains were some 11,500 years old, but a new study using more sophisticated techniques puts the date nearer to 11,000 years ago.
This date would make it impossible for the Clovis to have moved down from Alaska to Chile within a few hundred years - which they would have had to do if they were the progenitors of all native Americans.