10,000 Year Old Evidence of Human Settlement Among Earliest Ever Found in Bolivian Amazon

[n2doc]

Archaeologists surveying a region of the Bolivian Amazon not known for being inhabited by pre-agricultural communities discovered evidence of human settlers there dating back more than 10,000 years.

The terrain the research team surveyed is often though to be unfavorable to settlement. It is peppered with hundreds of "forest islands" -- small wooded mounds. But an excavation of three these mounds has revealed the forest islands are in fact piles of discarded shells, a dense accumulation of freshwater snail shells and animal bones as well as charcoal, forming a midden, or an old dump for domestic waste.

The discovery of the shell middens, which Bolivian archaeologist Jose Capriles, of the University of San Andres in La Paz, thinks were created by hunter-gatherer communities more than 10,000 years ago, places human settlement in the region much earlier than previously known.

"The challenge for the research was to demonstrate that these accumulations had been made by human beings and not, let's say, by other agents, such as birds or other animals. The evidence appears to us to be very strong after much analysis," Capriles said, according to Fox News Latino, which cited the Spanish-language news outlet EFE.

more
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/3790/20130903/10-000-year-old-evidence-human-settlement-earliest-found-bolivian.htm

[Laelth]

1. Interesting. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[yesphan]

2. Very cool.

It can't be true though. As we all know the Earth has not been in existence long enough.

I do know some folks that believe the young Earth stuff and they will just write this off to faulty carbon dating, etc.