Ancient humans may have reached Americas 100,000 years earlier than thought

Scientists say a cache of ancient bones and stones shows ancestral humans reached the New World more than 100,000 years earlier than previously thought. WIKISPOT

In a provocative and controversial claim, scientists say a scattering of bones and stones suggests ancestral humans reached the New World more than 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Most genetic and archaeological evidence shows humans first entered the Americas some 15,000 years ago. But a study nearly 25 years in the making in this week’s Nature finds that the 130,000-year-old bones of a mastodon, an extinct relative of the mammoth, unearthed in California were split open with blows from rocks. Rocks discovered near the bones bear the hallmarks of use as hammers, the scientists report.
The smashed bones may have been the handiwork of a Neanderthal, the scientists say, or the more ancient human relative called Homo erectus, or even our own species, Homo sapiens.

“We are making a claim that’s kind of out there,” acknowledges study co-author Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan. “We have had to toil over years to make sure we have considered every angle.”