God Man!!!!!! Humans Started Hunting Before 13,800 Years

Humans roamed North America before the Clovis culture 13,000 years ago has emerged from analysis of a bone-tip spear embedded in a mastodon bone, scientists said Thursday.The rib bone was found embedded with the tip of an ancient weapon in the 1970s, but a new analysis using DNA and radiocarbon dating shows it is actually 13,800 years old, placing it almost a millennia earlier than the Clovis people.

The research, led by Michael Waters of Texas A&M University and Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen, appears in the journal Science."I am sure that especially the Native Americans are pleased with the results of the study. It is further proof that humans have been present in North America for longer than previously believed," said Willerslev, director of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

"The 'Clovis First' theory, which many scientists swore to just a few years back, has finally been buried with the conclusions of this study."The mastodon bones and spear-tip, which was also carved from a mastodon bone, were found at the Manis Mastodon site in the western state of Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

The sharp bit of bone, found embedded in a mastodon rib unearthed in the 1970s, has long been controversial. Archaeologists have argued about both the date assigned to the bone — around 14,000 years old — and about whether the alleged weapon was really shaped by human hands. But now, researchers say it's likely that 13,800 years ago, hunters slaughtered elephant-like mastodons using bony projectile points not much bigger around than pencils, sharpened to needle-like tips.

"We're fortunate that the hunter 13,800 years ago was probably trying to get that bone projectile point in between the ribs, probably trying to get at a vital organ," said study researcher Michael Waters, an anthropologist at the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. "Maybe the mastodon flinched or his thrust was off, and he hit a rib instead and broke his bone projectile point. So it's bad for him, and good for us."

Willerslev and colleagues published a study three years ago that found the first traces of humans in North America are approximately 14,340 years old, based on Carbon-14 dating and DNA analysis of human remains in caves in the western state of Oregon, suggesting that American Indians are descendants of migrants who came from Asia.

One thing is for sure: The ancient mastodon kill wasn't a fair fight. The creature, unearthed by a rancher digging a stock tank in the late 1970s in Washington state, was old and likely sickly when it died, with teeth "quite literally worn down to a nubbin," said Donald Grayson, an anthropologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the new study.It was possible, Grayson said, that the bone was a part of the mastodon's own skeleton, perhaps even a dislodged bone chip from a fight with another animal.

"The Manis site provides further evidence of a human presence in the New World 800 years before Clovis and shows that people were hunting with mastodon bone weapons made from earlier kills," said the study.Previously, it was widely believed that the hunt for mastodons in North America began with the Clovis culture, "a type of common culture ancestral for all Native American tribes in North America," it said.

The rancher turned the site over to archaeologists, who returned the favor by dubbing the find the "Manis Mastodon," the rancher's surname. The archaeologist's claim that the mastodon was hunted down by humans about 14,000 years ago was regarded with suspicion among other researchers, however, who pointed out that there was no solid proof that the bony point found embedded in the mastodon bone was made by human hands.