Oldest American

Extract from LA Times

LOS ANGELES - LA Times - April 11 1999

In a discovery that sheds new light on the human conquest of the New World, a team of scientists says that bones from an ancient woman who lived on the Channel Islands off Ventura County in Southern California might be the oldest human remains ever found in North America.

The extraordinary discovery provides important clues to a ...mysterious period in human history -- the end of the last major ice age -- when .. people began populating the Americas but left little evidence about who they were or where they came from.

"....she may be the earliest inhabitant of North America we have discovered.

Researchers recently decided to subject the bones to sophisticated DNA and radiocarbon testing methods.... The results showed that the bones are probably 13,000 years old, 1,400 years older than previously thought.

That would make the "Arlington Springs woman" slightly older than the oldest known human skeletons in North America, which came from Montana, Idaho and Texas, scientists say.....

Recent discoveries point to an earlier colonization of the Western Hemisphere.

A campsite known as Monte Verde in southern Chile was occupied 12,500 years ago. At the Cactus Hill site in Virginia, scientists found stone tools and charcoal that may date back 15,500 years.

Scientists increasingly postulate that the original colonizers of the New World might have taken a coastal route....Protein-rich seafood was abundant, and the visitors could travel by boat.

"The broad significance is it puts humans in a maritime setting in western North America 13,000 years ago.

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