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In the 1970s a French archaeologist made a dramatic new discovery in a cave in Brazil: the 12,000 year old remains of a woman, about twenty, with very different physical characteristics from other peoples in the Americas at the time.  After careful study, a number of archaeologists speculated that she was Australoid or even African, which sparked a debate that has yet to end.  How did she get here?  Certainly not across the Bering Strait land bridge or remains from her population would have been found in North America.  Across the ocean?  Well, that would imply extraordinary watercraft skills.   12,000 years ago?  Really?!

While archaeologists are still debating Luzia, recent studies have re-dated her remains to a maximum of around 11,700 years ago.  

She is still an archaeological rarity, and one of the most fascinating sites in the Americas.

Read more about it:  https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/16253

It’s not like this is a new discussion in archaeology.  Archaeologists have been debating this question for almost a century.  The evidence is strong that megafauna extinctions were caused by a mixture of climate change and human hunting, and that human hunters were here on the continent long before the famed Clovis culture arrived.  There are four verifiable pre-Clovis mammoth and mastodon sites in North America now: The Schaefer and Hebior sites in Wisconsin, the Manis site in Washington, and the Page-Ladson site in Colorado.  As well, there are several tantalizing sites that seem to date back more than 40,000 years.     

But who were the hunters who came before Clovis?  Ah…that’s a good question.

You might want to read:  www.pas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1420650112