New Study Claims Humans Lived in the Americas 130,000 Years Ago

Humans lived in the Americas 130,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought before, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

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A team of eleven paleontologists allege that a site in San Diego contains evidence that early human ancestors smashed mastodon bones and teeth to make rudimentary tools. The site, scattered with anvils and hammer-stones, is now considered to be the oldest archeological site in the Americas, Mashable reported.

The widely-accepted range for humanity's recorded presence in the Americas is less than 15,000 years. But until recently, when researchers were able to accurately estimate the origins of the San Diego site, that range has come under question.

San Diego paleontologists first discovered the mastodon bones and rock tools in 1992, during a routine survey at a freeway construction site. The study’s authors stated that they don’t know how those particular humans ended up in southern California. They did, however, propose that the ancient humans might have crossed the Bering Strait or traveled in a watercraft from Asia.

But since no human remains were found at the site, they don’t know much about the human ancestors responsible for breaking the bones.

“As humans moved out of Africa and across the world, they took this type of technology with them,” Steve Holen, the study's lead author and director of research at the Center for American Paleolithic Research in South Dakota, told Nature.

"People were here breaking up the limb bones of this mastodon...probably to make tools out of them and they may have also extracted marrow for food.”

Some experts, however, approached the study with skepticism.

John McNabb, an archeologist at the University of Southampton in England, for example, said the study raised more questions than answers, Mashable reported. To prove this is truly evidence of human activity, he said, more information is needed about how people arrived there.

The new finding has been “rigorously researched and presented” but the paleontologists’ proposed narrative about the bone data “has some gaping holes that need filling,” according to Erella Hovers, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Paleontologists are expected to continue doing research on the site.