Piedra Museo is an archaeological site in

Santa Cruz Province, Argentina Santa Cruz Province ( es, Provincia de Santa Cruz, , 'Holy Cross') is a province of Argentina, located in the southern part of the country, in Patagonia. It borders Chubut Province to the north, and Chile to the west and south, with an Atlantic c ...

, and one of the earliest known archaeological remains in the Americas.

Overview

The site was discovered around 1910 by Argentine naturalist Florentino Ameghino, who wrote the first detailed anthropological study of Argentina, ''La antigüedad del hombre en el Plata'' (''The Antiquity of Man in the Río de la Plata Basin''), in 1878. A further 1995 excavation by

University of La Plata The La Plata National University ( es, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, UNLP) is one of the most important Argentine national universities and the biggest one situated in the city of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires Province. It has over 90 ...

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

Dr. Laura Miotti made a

carbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was de ...

analysis possible, and led to the discovery that its human

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

remains date from approximately 11,000 years ago.Welcome Argentina: Expediciones Arqueológicas en Los Toldos y en Piedra Museo
/ref> The site, located 250 km (150 mi) from

Pico Truncado Pico Truncado is a town and municipality in Santa Cruz Province in southern Argentina. In 1921, the village's railway station was the site of one of the few open engagements between the Argentine Army and anarchist strikers at the time of the e ...

, in

Deseado Department Deseado Department is a department in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. It has a population of 72,953 (2001) and an area of 63,784 km². The seat of the department is in Puerto Deseado. Municipalities * Caleta Olivia * Cañadón Seco * Fitz R ...

( Santa Cruz Province), is among the oldest archaeological remains uncovered in the Americas. Its discoveries included spear heads that contained traces of ''

Mylodon ''Mylodon'' is a genus of extinct ground sloth belonging to the family Mylodontidae, known from the region of Patagonia in Chile and Argentina in southern South America. With a total length of 3 to 4 m, it is one of the best-known and largest re ...

'' and ''

Hippidion ''Hippidion'' (meaning ''little horse'') is an extinct genus of equine that lived in South America from the Late Pliocene to the end of the Late Pleistocene ( Lujanian), between two million and 11,000 years ago. They were one of two lineages of e ...

'', among other animals known to have been extinct since at least 10000 BC. Its original inhabitants, the Toldense people, were

hunter gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle (sociology), lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants bu ...

s that subsisted on these and other prey, such as rhea and

guanaco The guanaco (; ''Lama guanicoe'') is a camelid native to South America, closely related to the llama. Guanacos are one of two wild South American camelids, the other being the vicuña, which lives at higher elevations. Etymology The guanaco ...

s. Piedra Museo, like

Pedra Furada Pedra Furada (, meaning pierced rock) is an important collection of over 800 archaeological sites in the state of Piauí, Brazil. These include hundreds of rock paintings dating from circa 12,000 years before present. More importantly, charcoal ...

(

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Monte Verde Monte Verde is an archaeological site in the Llanquihue Province in southern Chile, located near Puerto Montt, Southern Chile, which has been dated to as early as 18,500 cal BP (16,500 BC). Previously, the widely accepted date for early occu ...

(

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

), Topper, and the

Meadowcroft Rockshelter Meadowcroft Rockshelter is an archaeological site located near Avella in Jefferson Township, Pennsylvania. The site is a rock shelter in a bluff overlooking Cross Creek (a tributary of the Ohio River), and contains evidence that the area may have ...

(

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

), in turn have led to alternative theories to that of the "Clovis First" hypothesis on the

settlement of the Americas The settlement of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering o ...

(the assumption, based on lacking evidence to the contrary, that the

Clovis culture The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 a ...

was the first in the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...

).Smithsonian: Paleoamerican Origins
/ref> Fossils from Piedra Museo, as well as artifacts and

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

s from the nearby Los Toldos site, are housed in the Pico Truncado Regional Museum of History.

Overview

See also

References

Further reading