Find where your ancestors have done their needs, I will say where you come… Putting into practice this seemingly crazy idea, an international group of archaeologists has found in a cave in Oregon (USA) remains the oldest humans in North America: fossilized excrement 14,300 years old.This discovery, published Thursday in the journal "Science", also reinforces the hypothesis of an exclusively Asian origin of the pre-American populations.


Little forgotten
Paisley Caves in Oregon are now located in a dry, desert region, but there are more than 10000 years, it was bordered by a lake and was regularly visited by animals that then inhabited the region. Since 2002 , archaeologist Dennis Jenkins and his team at the University of Oregon have so far excavated one particular type of fossil: Dung also called coprolites fossilized.
Old pellets
Of more than 700 coprolithes discovered, most obviously came from animals but Jenkins a man suspected for some sixty of them. He entrusted these specimens paleogeneticien Eske Willerslev of the Center for Ancient Genetics in Copenhagen (Denmark), which has confirmed that at least six of these coprolites, dating from 12,300 to 14,300 years old, from many human excrement.So far, the oldest human fossils found in North America was attributed attributed to civilization Clovis, after at least 1,000 years to coprolithes of Paisley.
America invaded by Siberia
The analysis of DNA fragments retained in the human coprolithes was also revealed at least two genetic types - called A2 and G2-that characterize two of the four American Indian and which can be found in some Siberian peoples, but that is not find no trace in European populations.This discovery confirms the assumption of a settlement of America by nomadic hunters from Asia via the Bering Strait.


It makes more unlikely however advanced the hypothesis in 1998 by paleontologist Dennis Stanford, which suggested that the Solutrean Europeans were the first inhabitants of North America via the iceberg, which then derived in the Atlantic ice.