KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — The National Park Service has added a Lake County cave complex to the National Register of Historic Places, after researchers found evidence of human occupation of North America 14,300 years ago.
That’s nearly 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Excavations began at the Paisley Five Mile Point Caves in the 1930s. In 2002, students from the University of Oregon renewed the search for human remains.
A sandal from the cave complex is on display at the Klamath County Museum. The sandal dates back 8,000 to 9,000 years and was excavated by University of Oregon professor and archaeologist Luther Cressman, who initiated the digs at Paisley and nearby Fort Rock Cave.
“The site helps us understand more about how people were getting into the area, though it’s still unanswered in a lot of ways,” Reynolds said.
Paisley Five Mile Point Caves are managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management. “BLM is pleased to see the Paisley Five Mile Points officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places,” said Stan McDonald, the BLM’s state archaeologist for Oregon and Washington. “The site’s listing underscores the importance of Oregon’s archaeological heritage to understanding the full breadth of the human experience.”
The caves’ artifacts and organic remains — such as petrified feces, called coprolites — are some of the earliest artifacts in North America and provide clues to how humans lived and moved across North America, Reynolds said.
Before Clovis culture
Findings at Paisley predate by more than 1,000 years the appearance of southwest Clovis sites, which are known for distinctive projectile-point artifacts. For many years, the Clovis were widely accepted as the first humans to settle in the Americas.
Archaeological excavations and extensive laboratory analyses by the University of Oregon students, led by Dr. Dennis Jenkins, radiocarbon-dated more than 200 coprolites containing human DNA to pre-Clovis times.
The 14,300-year-old human feces demonstrate the presence of an ancient human population in America’s Far West at the end of the last Ice Age.
