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Guatemalan ‘potbelly’ sculptures suggest people knew about magnetism more than 2,000 years ago HEADS UP Colossal stone heads from an ancient Guatemalan site contain magnetic fields on the right temple and cheek, spots that apparently held special significance for makers of the New research provides the first detailed look at how these sculpted body parts were intentionally placed within magnetic fields on large rocks. The researchers studied 11 potbelly sculptures, six heads and five bodies, now displayed in a Guatemalan town. At least 127 such sculptures have been found at sites in Mesoamerica, an ancient cultural region that runs from...

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...

The secret is out: Man and gomphotheres once coexisted in Sonora. Tools and spear tips found with fossil bones at a remote Sonoran site suggest that Clovis-era hunters butchered two juvenile specimens of the elephantlike megafauna about 13,000 years ago. It's the first discovery of such recent evidence of gomphotheres in North America, said Vance Holliday, a University of Arizona anthropologist. It's also the first time gomphothere fossils were found together with implements made by Clovis people, the oldest known inhabitants of North America, Holliday said. The discovery, on a remote ranch in the Rio Sonora watershed, was actually made...

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...

...Now, chemical analysis has revealed that the men were far from home when they were killed, up to several days’ journey from where they were born and raised. The discovery is only the most recent example of violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the region, anthropologists say. But it bears important lessons about the nature of conflict and warfare in pre-contact California... The grave was unearthed in 2012 during the construction of a shopping center in the town of Pleasanton, in the Amador Valley just east of Oakland... One of the men suffered a severe blow above the left eye, causing...

New research published today in the journal Science Advances overturns more than a century of thought about the source of turquoise used by ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica, the vast region that extends from Central Mexico to Central America. For more than 150 years, scholars have argued that the Aztec and Mixtec civilizations, which revered the precious, blue-green mineral, acquired it through import from the American Southwest. However, extensive geochemical analyses reveal that the true geologic source of Aztec and Mixtec turquoise lies within Mesoamerica. Geochemist Alyson Thibodeau, assistant professor of earth sciences at Dickinson College, and a team of researchers...

A group of archaeologists has discovered the remains of more than 50 children who were ritually sacrificed by the pre-Columbian Chimu culture on the northern coast of what is now Peru. The site is located a close to another where evidence of the biggest-ever sacrifice of children was found, with more than 140 youngsters were slain. But the most recent discovery may be even bigger. “So far we have found the remains of 56 children who were sacrificed by the Chimu culture,” archaeologist Gabriel Prieto told AFP. “At this new site, we can easily double the number of remains we...

[Martha's Vineyard] The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation this week issued a public apology and launched an overhaul of its land management practices following the revelation that large numbers of trees and other plants had been dug up from two of its preserves and used to landscape an exclusive private property on the North Shore. *** The two foundation properties, the Caroline Tuthill Preserve in Edgartown and the Priscilla Hancock Meadow in Chilmark, were left damaged by heavy earth moving equipment brought in by contractors hired to landscape the 30-acre property of Dirk Ziff near Lambert’s Cove in West Tisbury.

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...

Forget small nomadic tribes and pristine jungle: the southern Amazon was likely covered in a network of large villages and ceremonial centers before Columbus. Geoglyphs in the southern Amazon are evidence of a once-thriving population. Photograph courtesy of University of Exeter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Before Spanish invaders conquered South America, sparse groups of nomadic people clustered around the Amazon River, leaving the surrounding rain forest pristine and untouched. Or did they? New research suggests a very different story—an Amazonian region peppered with rain forest villages, ceremonial earthworks, and a much larger population than previously thought. The research, funded in part by the...

Modern-day Mexico City is built on top of centuries of previous settlements, so it's not unusual for ancient tombs to occasionally be uncovered beneath the city's streets. It is, however, strange to find 10 ancient skeletons arranged in a spiral with their bodies interlocked, as archaeologists recently did. The 2,400-year-old burial was discovered during salvage excavations of an ancient village beneath the campus of the Pontifical University of Mexico, in southern Mexico City, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced.

A bronze buckle and a cylindrical metal bead found in Alaska are the first hard evidence of trade between Asia and the indigenous peoples of the North American Arctic, centuries before contact with Europeans, archaeologists say. An analysis of the artifacts has shown that they were smelted in East Asia out of lead, copper, and tin, before finding their way to an indigenous village some 700 years ago.

On a rugged island just offshore from Ventura County, archaeologists have turned up evidence of some of the oldest human activity in coastal Southern California. On Santa Cruz Island, the largest of the Channel Islands, researchers have found three sites scattered with ancient tool-making debris and the shells of harvested shellfish. The youngest of the three sites has been dated to 6,600 BCE, but based on the types of tools found at the other two, archaeologists say they may be as much as 11,000 to 12,000 years old. The artifacts are traces of what's known as the Island Paleocoastal culture,...

Research Casts New Light on History of North America Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his students lends support to evidence the first humans to settle the Americas came from Europe, rather than crossing a Bering Strait land-ice bridge. Valparaiso’s research shows the Kankakee Sand Islands – a series of hundreds of small dunes in the Kankakee River area of Northwest Indiana and northeastern Illinois – were created 14,500 to 15,000 years ago and that the region could not have been covered by ice as previously thought. Newswise — Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his...

The new genetic analysis takes aim at the theory that just one founding group settled the Americas =========================================================================================================== Brazil's Surui people, like the man pictured above, share ancestry with indigenous Australians, new evidence suggests. (PAULO WHITAKER/Reuters/Corbis) ==================================================================================================================== More than 15,000 years ago, humans began crossing a land bridge called Beringia that connected their native home in Eurasia to modern-day Alaska. Who knows what the journey entailed or what motivated them to leave, but once they arrived, they spread southward across the Americas. The prevailing theory is that the first Americans arrived in a single wave, and all Native American populations...