Dig Gives Earlier Proof of People on the Plains

Woolly mammoth bones from a site in northwestern Kansas indicate that humans were occupying the Great Plains 1,000 years earlier than previously believed, researchers reported this month.

“Fracture patterns on the bones suggest they were broken by humans who may have been processing them for marrow or to make bone tools,” said archeologist Steven Holen of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “The radiocarbon dating shows that these finds are a thousand years older than the best-documented evidence of humans on the Great Plains.”

The previously oldest known evidence of humans on the Great Plains dates from 11,000 to 11,500 years ago, and was found in part at a mammoth kill site near Greeley, Colo.

The new site was discovered in Sherman County, Kan., by archeological geologist Rolfe Mandel of the Kansas Geological Survey. The finds include bones from an Ice Age camel and two mammoths. A rock fragment found among the bones may be a piece of a stone hammer, Mandel said.

The location was probably a campsite that was occupied for a few days or weeks by a small group of nomadic people.

Closer to the surface, artifacts were found dating from about 11,000 years ago. Those materials included stone flakes, tools and pieces of mammoth bone, further suggesting a hunting site. Some of the tools were made of stone from the Texas Panhandle, indicating that the group was highly mobile.

“Something -- probably water -- kept attracting people back to this location,” Mandel said.