Yukon Home Shows First Traces Of Humans In North America

A new carbon aging test done on bones discovered in Yukon in the 1970s now shows that it housed humans 10,000 years earlier than scientists originally thought.

Once this theory is confirmed, the Yukon Bluefish Caves, which lie in the Beringia region stretching between Yukon and Alaska over the Bering Sea, was a dry landmass that is now mostly underwater. However, new evidence showed that lots of evidence show human presence in the area. CBC News reported that 23 fragments studied were likely bones that belonged to animals -- butchered by the people living in the caves.

Science Daily reported that doctoral student Lauriane Borugeon examined about 36,000 bone fragments from the site for two years. Comprehensive analysis of pieces revealed traces of human activity in 15 of the bones, with another 20 showing probable traces of the same activity.

Professor Ariane Burke of the Université de Montréal's Department of Anthropology said that a series of straight V-shaped lines on the surface of the bones were unmistakably stone tools used to skin animals. "These are indisputable cut-marks created by humans."

Most early presence sites dated back to 14,000 years ago, but human presence supports the standstill theory that many have accepted previously. The theory argued that a group of humans from Central Asia was actually isolated in Beringia during the last Ice Age around 24,000 years ago. Their isolation caused their DNA to become unique but can still be traced to modern humans.

"Genetic isolation would have corresponded to geographical isolation. During the Last Glacial Maximum, Beringia was isolated from the rest of North America by glaciers and steppes too inhospitable for human occupation to the West. It was potentially a place of refuge," Burke noted.

If so, the Beringians were then among the ancestors of the people who colonized the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age.