18,000-year-old shelter may be the oldest evidence of human occupation in the Americas

Archaeologists have unearthed the oldest stone tools buried under thick volcanic ash in a rock shelter in Southern Oregon in the US. The radiocarbon dating suggests that these ancient artifacts were last used roughly 18,000 years ago.

The excavation work at the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter was carried out by a team of archeologists from the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History Archaeological Field School.

The stone tool findings make this location one of the Americas’ earliest known human-inhabited sites.

Teeth fragments of prehistoric animals  

The team found two stone…