Find suggests humans were in US 50,000 years ago

ARTEFACTS found in a hillside along the Savannah River indicate that modern humans inhabited North America as long as 50,000 years ago, a discovery that challenges long-held theories on the migration of our ancient ancestors.

The find, reported by archaeologist Albert Goodyear of the University of South Carolina, flies in the face of the conventional scientific view that homo sapiens moved into North America within the past 12,000 years. Until then, a 23,000-year-long Ice Age was thought to have blocked travel across Alaska’s Bering Strait.

“Fifty thousand years ago is mind-boggling. It challenges a lot of theories,” Eric Powell of Archaeology magazine said. “All of our models of how humans migrated will have to be reconsidered if this holds up.”

The report, awaiting publication, is certain to be controversial among archaeologists as it means the first people raced across the globe after migrating from Africa 100,000 years ago.

North and South America had long been considered the last continents settled by humans, but the find suggests Asia was just a rest stop for humanity early on.