2022/12/23 by Loren G. Davis, David B. Madsen, David A. Sisson +13 · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Evolution and Paleontology Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.ade1248
openalex publication_date 2022/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/18
The timing and character of the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas are measured by the discovery of unequivocal artifacts from well-dated contexts. We report the discovery of a well-dated artifact assemblage containing 14 stemmed projectile points from the Cooper's Ferry site in western North America, dating to ~16,000 years ago. These stemmed points are several thousand years older than Clovis fluted points (~13,000 cal yr B.P.) and are ~2300 years older than stemmed points found previously at the site. These points date to the end of Marine Isotope Stage 2 when glaciers had closed off an interior land route into the Americas. This assemblage includes an array of stemmed projectile points that resemble pre-Jomon Late Upper Paleolithic tools from the northwestern Pacific Rim dating to ~20,000 to 19,000 years ago, leading us to hypothesize that some of the first technological traditions in the Americas may have originated in the region.