A new controversial report suggests that human beings may have been living in California 130,000 years ago. This, of course, is a shocking theory as most archaeologists and paleontologists believe the first human inhabitants of North America were around 12,000 to 15,000 years ago.
Via Newsweek:
During the construction of a California highway in 1992, experts from the San Diego Natural History Museum carrying out routine paleontological monitoring of the site uncovered an archaeological site. Researchers found the bones of a mastodon—an extinct elephant-like creature. The bones had been unusually positioned alongside a set of tools known to have been used by early humans, including hammerstones and stone anvils. At the time, however, scientists were not able to accurately date the bones, so their significance was unclear.
Now, using advanced uranium–thorium dating techniques, scientists have been able to work out when the mastodon lived. Their findings, published in Nature, showed it was 130,000 years ago—115,000 years before scientists thought humans first made it to the United States.
While some believe this means humans were in California 130,000 years ago, others, like archaeologist Donald Grayson, believe that is not the case – rather the mastodon bones were just crushed by the crews working on the freeway.
“I have read that paper and I was astonished by it,” Grayson told BuzzFeed News. “I was astonished not because it is so good, but because it is so bad.”
Naturally, there are a lot of questions that will need to be addressed by archaeologists in the near future, the biggest being: Could those people from 130,000 years ago actually afford the rent to live in San Diego? Because most modern day humans can not.
