Stunning rock art site reveals that humans settled the Colombian Amazon 13,000 years ago
The first humans to settle the Amazon Basin arrived around 13,000 years ago as part of a mass migration that quickly swept across the Americas, researchers have discovered. After coming to what is now Serranía de la Lindosa, an archaeological site on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, these early Americans lived in rock shelters, fashioned stone tools, hunted and gathered and created massive displays of rock art , according to a new study, published in the March issue of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews . While it was previously known that this area had been occupied beginning at least 12,600 years ago, as evidenced by the rock art, researchers were able to get a better understanding of how the area was utilized and any instances when it wasn’t occupied at all. "The 'peopling' of South America represents one of the great migrations of human history — but their arrival into the Amazon biome has been little understood," Mark Robinson , a...