This Archaeological Discovery in Oregon Could Change The Human Timeline

How did a small piece of dried human waste rewrite the timeline of the first Americans?

In Oregon’s northern Great Basin, the Paisley 5 Mile Point Caves preserved one of the most important and unlikely artifacts in American archaeology: ancient coprolites. These dried pieces of human waste were sealed in the arid cave sediments for thousands of years, carrying radiocarbon dates and genetic evidence that placed people in Oregon before the Clovis culture.

For most of the 20th century, the dominant model was Clovis First. It held that the earliest Americans were the makers of distinctive fluted Clovis points, arriving around the end of the last ice age. But the Paisley Caves pushed human presence earlier, with coprolites dated to roughly 14,300 years ago and mitochondrial DNA linked to Native American founding lineages.

The discovery was controversial because coprolites can be difficult evidence. Critics raised serious concerns about contamination, burrowing animals, and whether younger human DNA might have moved downward into older sediments. But later work strengthened the case through stratigraphy, Western Stemmed projectile points, repeated radiocarbon dating, and fecal lipid biomarkers that confirmed some pre-Clovis coprolites were human.
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