Craptastic News: How Human Coprolites Confirmed Pre-Clovis Occupations in Oregon

Figure 1: Paisley Caves Site (Image Source: Don's Maps Website)

For many decades archaeologists were convinced that the earliest human occupation of the Western hemisphere was completed by the Clovis people, but over the years new evidence began to erode away this hypothesis.  The archaeological community has recently (and among some, begrudgingly) accepted the fact that there was Pre-Clovis settlement and occupation of the Western hemisphere, but it remained unclear when, where, and who began occupying these regions.  There were several sites that suggested Pre-Clovis settlement, but the evidence at each site was shaky and fraught with weaknesses, largely due to a lack of suitable methods to appropriately and precisely study the evidence.

 

This lack of suitable evidence is beginning to no longer be an issue, though.  In the summer of 2020 an international team of scholars, which included Lisa-Marie Shillito, Helen Welton, John Blong,  Dennis Jenkins, Thomas Connolly, and Ian Bull, published an article that not only confirmed a Pre-Clovis human occupation at the site of Paisley Caves in Oregon (Figure 1) but also detailed a new study that could more precisely examine ancient DNA from coprolite evidence.  Their study built off of previous work that proved that human feces (coprolites) were present within the caves, but the conclusions that these coprolites were from a Pre-Clovis occupation of the cave were called into question.  Critics claimed that their coprolite evidence could have been contaminated as a result of natural erosive processes that moved the coprolites from their original deposit areas.  The scholars responsible for the earlier studies could not account for whether or not this happened, leading to their original conclusions being appropriately doubted.  Shillito et al.’s work, however, examines ancient DNA in aspects of the coprolites that are more difficult to travel once released from the human body, which lends strength to their conclusions that the coprolites do indeed demonstrate an early human occupation of the Paisley Caves, dating to 14,200 years ago.

 

While this information that confirms Pre-Clovis settlement in Oregon is monumental and incredibly important the methods employed by Shillito et al. are also groundbreaking.  Genetic studies are very significant in investigating early human occupations of the Western hemisphere, but there exists legitimate ethical and legal concerns of studying and working with human remains.  Therefore, new ways of extracting and studying ancient DNA is needed, and coprolite evidence allows for those genetic studies to continue.  As new advances in how we study coprolite evidence continues more information about our human past can and will be discovered, enriching our understanding of our human history.

 

Bibliography

AIA. (2020, July 16). 14,000-Year-Old Fossilized Feces Retested. Retrieved from Archaeology Magazine: https://www.archaeology.org/news/8859-200716-oregon-human-coprolites?fbclid=IwAR265Wws-WH-sDKc6iLwRENpfX7J_IHC03Ecey_nanih2-081OmjqaFW9Mk

Newcastle University. (2020, July 16). Archaeologists date earliest known occupation of North America. Retrieved from Phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-archaeologists-date-earliest-occupation-north.html

Shillito, L.-M., Whelton, H. L., Blong, J. C., Jenkins, D. L., Connolly, T. J., & Bull, I. D. (2020). Pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas identified by human fecal biomarkers incoprolites from Paisley Caves, Oregon. Science Advances, 1-8.

Strommer, K. (2020, August 7). Paisley Caves study uncovers a new scoop on ancient poop. Retrieved from Around the O, University of Oregon: https://around.uoregon.edu/content/paisley-caves-study-uncovers-new-scoop-ancient-poop