Science Magazine Originally Posted: August 30, 2019 About 16,000 years ago, on the banks of a river in western Idaho, people kindled fires, shaped stone blades and spearpoints, and butchered large mammals. All were routine activities in prehistory, but their legacy today is anything but. The charcoal and bone left at that ancient site, now called Cooper’s Ferry, are some 16,000 years old—the oldest radiocarbon-dated record of human presence in North America, according to work reported this week in Science. The findings do more than add a few centuries to the timeline of people in the Americas. They also shore up a new picture of how humans first arrived, by showing that people lived at Cooper’s Ferry more than 1 millennium before melting glaciers opened an [...]

Eureka Alert Originally Posted: August 29, 2019 DALLAS (SMU) - Humans started making an impact on the global ecosystem through intensive farming much earlier than previously estimated, according to a new study published in the journal Science. Evidence of the earliest domesticated plants and animals dates back to around 10,000 years ago. But findings from a team of more than 250 archeologists, including two from SMU (Southern Methodist University), show that by 3,000 years ago our ancestors had dramatically changed the world to grow food. "Our study shows in detail the progression from the origins of agriculture to its spread around the world," said SMU anthropologist Mark D. McCoy. "It turns out that earth science models are probably too conservative, and intensive reshaping of the environment [...]