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WA****NGTON - New evidence shows humans lived in North America more
than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than had previously been
known.

Discovered in a cave in Oregon, fossil feces yielded DNA indicating
these early residents were related to people living in Siberia and
East Asia, according to a re****t in Thursday's online edition of the
journal Science.

"This is the first time we have been able to get dates that are
undeniably human, and they are 1,000 years before Clovis," said Dennis
L. Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, referring to the
Clovis culture, well-known for its unique spear-points that have been
studied previously.

Humans are widely believed to have arrived in North America from Asia
over a land-bridge between Alaska and Siberia during a warmer period.
A variety of dates has been proposed and some are in dispute.

Few artifacts were found in the cave, leading Jenkins to speculate
that these people stayed there only a few days at a time before moving
on, perhaps following game animals or looking for other food.

The petrified poop - coprolites to scientists - is yielding a look at
the diet of these ancient Americans, Jenkins said.

While the analysis is not yet complete, he said there are bones of
squirrels, bison hair, fish scales, protein from birds and dogs and
the remains of plants such as grass and sunflowers.

The oldest of several coprolites studied is 14,340 calendar years old,
said co-author Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient
Genetics at Denmark's University of Copenhagen.

"The Paisley Cave material represents, to the best of my knowledge,
the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas," he said. "Other pre-
Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained."

The date for the new coprolites is similar to that of Monte Verde in
southern Chile, where human artifacts have been discovered, added
Willerslev.

Jenkins said it isn't clear exactly who these people living in the
Oregon caves were, since there were few artifacts found. He said there
was one stone tool, a hand tool used perhaps to polish or grind or
mash bones or fat.

"We are not saying that these people were of a particular ethnic
group. At this point, we know they most likely came from Siberia or
Eastern Asia, and we know something about what they were eating, which
is something we can learn from coprolites. We're talking about human
signature," he said.

"If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are
going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find
them," Jenkins said.

The Clovis culture has been dated to between 13,200 and 12,900
calendar years ago and is best known by the tools left behind.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First
Americans at Texas A&M University, said the find, along with
indications of human presence at other locations, adds to the evidence
for a pre-Clovis human presence in North America.

"The genetic evidence from the coprolites from Paisley Caves is also
consistent with the current genetic data for the peopling of the
Americas - that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas came from
Northeast Asia," added Waters, who was not part of the research team.

Anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, said this data along with material from Alaska provide
increasing "evidence that ancestors of Native Americans used a coastal
route during the colonization of the Americas." Malhi was not part of
the research team.

Jenkins said that discoveries like those in the Oregon caves "help us
to reconstruct the American past."

"Our heritage is really im****tant and it is im****tant to the majority
of the American public. If you don't know where you come from, it's
hard to have a feeling of community, of participation."

To make sure the Oregon cave material hadn't been contaminated with
modern DNA, the researchers tested more than 50 people who worked at
the site. The DNA testing indicated that the feces belonged to Native
Americans in two groups that can be traced to Siberia and East Asia.

In their paper the researchers dated the coprolites at 12,300 "carbon
years" before the present. Prior to 3,000 years ago, carbon years
differed from calendar years, resulting in the date of approximately
14,300 calendar years for the coprolites.

The research was funded by the Museum of Natural and Cultural History,
University of Oregon; Association of Oregon Archaeologists and the
Marie Curie Actions program.