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The earliest human footprint on record in the Americas wasn't found in Canada, the United States or even Mexico; it was found much farther south, in Chile, and it dates to an astonishing 15,600 years ago, a new study finds. The finding sheds light on when humans first reached the Americas, likely by traveling across the Bering Strait land bridge in the midst of the last ice age. This 10.2-inch-long (26 centimeters) print might even be evidence of pre-Clovis people in South America, the group that came before the Clovis, which are known for their distinctive spearheads, the researchers said.

The Bering land bridge was exposed at various times over an almost three million year period, when wide scale glaciation lowered sea levels by as much as 150 metres. The land bridge was part of "Beringia," which refers to the stretch of land between present day Siberia and Yukon Territory. It's been home to woolly mammoths, steppe bison and humans. Jeff Bond, a geologist with Yukon Geological Survey in Whitehorse, has produced a map showing what Beringia looked like 18,000 years ago. At that time, much of the earth was glaciated, but Beringia remained predominantly ice-free due to its arid...

By sequencing and analyzing 15 ancient genomes found throughout the Americas—six of which were older than 10,000 years—these researchers determined that, around 8,000 years ago, the ancestors of Native Americans were still on the move, migrating away from Mesoamerica (what is today Mexico and Central America) toward both North and South America. These groups moved rapidly and unevenly, sometimes interbreeding with local populations, complicating the genetic—and historical—picture even further. The close genetic similarity observed between some of the groups studied suggests rapid migratory speed through North and South America. The Meltzer and Willerslev team, which included dozens of researchers from...

In the lowest layer of the Area 15 archaeological grounds at the Gault Site in Central Texas, researchers have unearthed a projectile point technology never previously seen in North America, which they date to be at least 16,000 years old, or a time before Clovis. While clear evidence for the timing of the peopling of the Americas remains elusive, these findings suggest humans occupied North America prior to Clovis - considered one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Paleo-Indian culture of North America, and dated to around 11,000 years ago. In 2002, Area 15 of the Gault Site in...

Through excavation of the Debra L. Friedkin site northwest of Austin, Texas, a team of archaeologists has identified a particular style of projectile point dated between 13,500 and 15,500 years ago — this is earlier than typical Clovis-style technologies dated to 13,000 years ago. The team found more than 100,000 artifacts, including 328 tools and 12 complete and fragmented projectile points (about 3-4 inches, or 7.6-10.2 cm, long), excavated from the Buttermilk Creek Complex horizon of the Debra L. Friedkin site.From 19 optically stimulated luminescence dates of sediments, they determined the artifacts were between 13,500- and 15,500- years-old.“There is no...

Ancient tools that may give historians a glimpse into America's history were recently discovered just feet below the surface in Texas. Researchers with Texas A&M University made the stunning discovery during a dig at the Debra L. Friedkin site, located just 40 miles northwest of Austin. Archaeologists have been searching for artifacts at the site near Buttermilk Creek for more than a decade — but this may be their most important find yet. Michael Waters, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M, and staff from Baylor University and the...

FULL TITLE: Discovery of Ancient Spearpoints in Texas Has Some Archaeologists Questioning the History of Early Americas ______________________________________________________________ Archaeologists have discovered two previously unknown forms of spearpoint technology at a site in Texas. The triangular blades appear to be older than the projectile points produced by the Paleoamerican Clovis culture, an observation that’s complicating our understanding of how the Americas were colonized—and by whom. Clovis-style spear points began to appear around 13,000 to 12,700 years ago, and they were produced by Paleoamerican hunter-gatherers known as the Clovis people. Made from stones, these leaf-shaped (lanceolate) points featured a shallow concave base...

Full Title: Discovery of Ancient Spearpoints in Texas Has Some Archaeologists Questioning the History of Early Americas Archaeologists have discovered two previously unknown forms of spearpoint technology at a site in Texas. The triangular blades appear to be older than the projectile points produced by the Paleoamerican Clovis culture, an observation that’s complicating our understanding of how the Americas were colonized—and by whom. Clovis-style spear points began to appear around 13,000 to 12,700 years ago, and they were produced by Paleoamerican hunter-gatherers known as the Clovis people. Made from stones, these leaf-shaped (lanceolate) points featured a shallow concave base and...

Sam Clovis, a former national co-chairman of the Trump campaign, is one of three Trump figures known to have been contacted by FBI informant Stefan Halper during the 2016 presidential campaign. Clovis received an email, out of the blue, from Halper, whom he did not know, on August 29, 2016 — after Halper had been in touch with Carter Page and just before he contacted George Papadopoulos. Page and Papadopoulos were peripheral, sometime volunteer Trump foreign policy advisers, but they are key figures in the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election. Clovis,...

... Clovis, who made the final decision in March 2016 to bring both Page and Papadopoulos onto the campaign, had no inclination that Halper was spying on Trump associates. Clovis and Halper met for coffee on Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, 2016 near Washington. Clovis said the conversation was innocuous, focusing mostly on foreign policy issues, including China, one of Halper’s areas of expertise. ... I've always have been suspicious of both Page and Papadopoulos and still am. I'm adding Clovis to the list. Thinking he's now a contender for the campaign plant. Halper just has that "That was easy"...

A secret FBI informant who has come into the spotlight in recent days reportedly met with three advisers to President Trump's campaign during the 2016 presidential election. The Washington Post reported Friday that in addition to meeting with Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, the informant – described as an American academic – also met with former Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis. The informant, a professor who is said to be a longtime U.S. intelligence source, met Clovis for coffee in northern Virginia in the summer of 2016, during which he offered to provide foreign policy advice to...

On a rugged bluff overlooking the Ohio River, known locally as "Devil's Backbone," centuries of overgrowth obscures a secret of history... In 1799, early settlers found six skeletons clad in breastplates bearing a Welsh coat of arms. Indian legends told of "yellow-haired giants" who settled in Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern Ohio and Tennessee -- a region they called "the Dark and Forbidden Land." Archeologists debunk the legend. They say that evidence indicates that the natives of the region once conducted a vigorous trading network nearby and buried their dead on the bluff... Upstream about 14 miles from Louisville, Ky., the...

<p>WASHINGTON — Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign official who is now linked to special counsel Robert Mueller's federal probe into Russia's interference in the presidential election, is withdrawing his nomination to be the Agriculture Department's chief scientist.</p> <p>“We respect Mr. Clovis’s decision to withdraw his nomination," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday.</p>

The senior Trump campaign official who brought George Papadopoulos onto the Trump campaign met last week with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors and testified before a federal grand jury, NBC news is reporting. Sam Clovis, the campaign’s co-chairman and top policy adviser, brought Papadopoulos onto the campaign’s foreign policy team last March, The Daily Caller was told on Monday. Interactions between Clovis and Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old energy consultant, became a subject of intrigue on Monday after a federal court unsealed documents showing that Papadopoulos accepted a plea deal earlier this month for lying to the FBI about his interactions with...

Top officials on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rebuffed requests from a lower level volunteer seeking meetings between the then-real estate mogul and Russian government, according to email exchanges leaked to The Washington Post. According to The Post, George Papadopoulos, an energy consultant, sent a half-dozen emails to Trump campaign officials suggesting and requesting meetings between Trump and members of the Russian government, including Vladimir Putin. The campaign emails, which were read to The Post by an unidentified source, reveal a previously-undisclosed connection between a member of the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Papadopoulos indicated in some of the emails...

CLOVIS, N.M. — New Mexico state police say there has been a shooting at a public library in the eastern New Mexico community Clovis. The Eastern New Mexico News reports that multiple people were killed and several others were injured in a shooting. Officer Carl Christiansen said Clovis police responded to the library this afternoon in response to a report of an active shooter. He could not immediately confirm whether there were any fatalities or injuries.

IN CEDROS ISLAND IN MEXICO—Matthew Des Lauriers got the first inkling that he had stumbled on something special when he pulled over on a dirt road here, seeking a place for his team to use the bathroom. While waiting for everyone to return to the car, Des Lauriers, then a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, meandered across the landscape, scanning for stone tools and shell fragments left by the people who had lived on the island in the past 1500 years. As he explored, his feet crunched over shells of large Pismo clams—bivalves that he hadn't seen...

In a previous installment I mentioned France's recent war on blogs and the internet. France along with Germany are demanding that American based ISP and Blog services censor content that might be deemed offensive to Muslims. They threatened crackdowns if it was not complied. Since last summer we have received record viewership from France.  We did not know whether to attribute it to French Catholic viewership for our posts of videos and articles by Michael Voris Of Church Militant TV and other Catholic channels or if it was warning of an impending attack by the French Government and or perhaps...

Traces of platinum, a metal associated with meteorite impact, have been found at archaeological sites of the Clovis people across the US, suggesting that they were wiped out in a mini-Ice-Age triggered by the impact of an extraterrestrial object. The Clovis people disappeared from North America about 12,800 years ago. Many of the large creatures they hunted – a total of about 35 species – went extinct at about the same time.

Life came to ice-free Canadian corridor too late to sustain migrations of Clovis and pre-Clovis people. Archaeologists need a new theory for the colonization of the Americas. Plant and animal DNA buried under two Canadian lakes squashes the idea that the first Americans travelled through an ice-free corridor that extended from Alaska to Montana.The analysis, published online in Nature on 10 August and led by palaeo­geneticist Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, suggests that the passageway became habitable 12,600 years ago1. That’s nearly 1,000 years after the formation of the Clovis culture — once thought to be the first Americans — and...